Just a simple question.

[Maureen L Thomas]

My old HP is not working right and it is very old.  I am looking at
laser printers and have always favored HP.  But, in saying that I am
open to any brand.  I always get an all in one model since it does come
in handy.  Any advice is welcome.  Thanks in advance.

Maureen

[Ash Joubert]

My old HP is not working right and it is very old.  I am looking at
laser printers and have always favored HP.  But, in saying that I am
open to any brand.  I always get an all in one model since it does come
in handy.  Any advice is welcome.  Thanks in advance.

Every time this question comes up at work, the response is always the
same: to send the latest version of this article:
"After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is
still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale."
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework
My Brother MFC-L2740DW All-In-One Mono Laser (discontinued) is almost
ten years old and continues to serve me well. I am sure they have newer
models that are similar. It is on my WiFi network (as 192.168.0.42) and
also serves a Mac and a Windows PC.

- Open source CUPS drivers work (foomatic-db-compressed-ppds
20230202-1), though the Gnome print dialog seems to required for high
quality printing

- Closed source (?) scanner drivers work (brscan4 0.4.11-10)

I am on sid amd64. My setup notes:


CUPS config:

Use ipp connection and select Brother / IPP Everywhere driver

Description: Brother MFC-L2740DW
Driver: MFC-L2740DW series - IPP Everywhere (grayscale, 2-sided
printing)
Connection: ipp://192.168.0.42/ipp
Defaults: job-sheets=none, none media=iso_a4_210x297mm
sides=two-sided-long-edge

Options: quality normal, two-sided long edge


Sane config (run as root):

brsaneconfig4 -a name=Brother_MFC-L2740DW model=MFC-L2740DW ip=192.168.0.42

Check config:

$ cat /etc/opt/brother/scanner/brscan4/brsanenetdevice4.cfg
DEVICE=Brother_MFC-L2740DW , "MFC-L2740DW" , 0x4f9:0x320 ,
IP-ADDRESS=192.168.0.42


Cheers,

[Will Mengarini]

My old HP is not working right and it is very old. I am looking at
laser printers and have always favored HP. But, in saying that I am
open to any brand. I always get an all in one model since it does come
in handy. Any advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.

"After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still
whatever random Brother laser printer that's on sale."
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework
My Brother MFC-L2740DW All-In-One Mono Laser (discontinued) is almost ten
years old and continues to serve me well. I am sure they have newer models
that are similar. It is on my WiFi network (as 192.168.0.42) and also serves
a Mac and a Windows PC.
- Open source CUPS drivers work (foomatic-db-compressed-ppds 20230202-1),
though the Gnome print dialog seems to required for high quality printing
- Closed source (?) scanner drivers work (brscan4 0.4.11-10)
Use ipp connection and select Brother / IPP Everywhere driver
Description: Brother MFC-L2740DW
Driver: MFC-L2740DW series - IPP Everywhere (grayscale, 2-sided
printing)
Connection: ipp://192.168.0.42/ipp
Defaults: job-sheets=none, none media=iso_a4_210x297mm
sides=two-sided-long-edge
Options: quality normal, two-sided long edge
brsaneconfig4 -a name=Brother_MFC-L2740DW model=MFC-L2740DW ip=192.168.0.42
$ cat /etc/opt/brother/scanner/brscan4/brsanenetdevice4.cfg
DEVICE=Brother_MFC-L2740DW , "MFC-L2740DW" , 0x4f9:0x320 ,
IP-ADDRESS=192.168.0.42
Cheers,
--
Director / Game Developer
Transient Software Limited <https://transient.nz/>
New Zealand

I have nothing to add; I posted only because this is such a good
answer that I wanted it to have an informative subject line.

[basti]

My old HP is not working right and it is very old. I am looking at
laser printers and have always favored HP. But, in saying that I am
open to any brand. I always get an all in one model since it does come
in handy. Any advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.

"After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still
whatever random Brother laser printer that's on sale."
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/2/24117976/best-printer-2024-home-use-office-use-labels-school-homework
My Brother MFC-L2740DW All-In-One Mono Laser (discontinued) is almost ten
years old and continues to serve me well. I am sure they have newer models
that are similar. It is on my WiFi network (as 192.168.0.42) and also serves
a Mac and a Windows PC.

Brother printers have been OK for small home loads so far, but HP would
be preferable.

Therefore:

- Toner cartridges contain not only toner, but also various rollers that
are renewed with each toner

- Drivers as PPD files, not a binary blob, all CPU architectures that
can run CUPS are supported

In my experience over the last 15 years, Brother printers cause more
problems in office environments than HP printers.

Best Regards

[Hans]

My old HP is not working right and it is very old. I am looking at
laser printers and have always favored HP. But, in saying that I am
open to any brand. I always get an all in one model since it does come
in handy. Any advice is welcome. Thanks in advance.
Maureen

Hi Maureen,

I am great friend of "Brother" printers. They are cheap and reliable and they
are well supported by linux. Brother is offering deb packages for installing
or a linu script, which is downloading and installing these packages
automatically.

I also had some eperience with printers from Epson. They are also offering
installation packages, but sometimes they are outdated. I believe, Epson is
not so much intereested in customers using linux as Brother is.

Before you buy: Be sure, the manufacturer is sopporting linux.

Hope, this helps.

Best

Hans

P.S. Oh, and before you buy, check and compare prices of printer cartridges,
they often differ much.

[Stefan Monnier]

Post by Hans
I am great friend of "Brother" printers. They are cheap and reliable and they
are well supported by linux. Brother is offering deb packages for installing
or a linu script, which is downloading and installing these packages
automatically.

Of course, that means you're at the mercy of Brother providing the
drivers which work for your printer&computer and those deb packages
typically aren't as nicely integrated into your Debian system as if
they'd been packaged by Debian.

E.g. do they provide armhf builds? Are they for Ubuntu? Debian?
Stable? Testing? Sid? Oldstable? Do they risk messing up other parts
of your config? Can you determine that they can't send confidential
info back to Brother or act as puppets after they've been hacked
because of an undisclosed security hole somewhere?

If the drivers (print&scan) are not distributed in Debian's main
archive, I can't recommend it.

Post by Hans
Before you buy: Be sure, the manufacturer is sopporting linux.

Where "supporting" means that it provides code as Free Software, so it
can be adapted to any other OS and architecture you like.

Luckily, nowadays most printers support the standard APIs for
"driverless" printing and scanning, so the nasty proprietary code is
confined to the actual printer, but you might still prefer to put that
printer on a separate non-routed subnetwork so *you* control it rather
than the manufacturer.


Stefan

[Gerard ROBIN]

Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2024 20:18:03 -0400
Subject: Just a simple question.
My old HP is not working right and it is very old.  I am looking at laser
printers and have always favored HP.  But, in saying that I am open to any
brand.  I always get an all in one model since it does come in handy.  Any
advice is welcome.  Thanks in advance.

Same problem, my old HP printer worked fine with HPLIP but new HP printers
don't support HPLIP anymore. Finally I bought a Brother that I could
configure very easily with Bookworm. And if needed Brother provides Debian
packages for configuration.