I’ve noticed a general sentiment that printing on Linux is (or at least was) extremely cumbersome and difficult. Why is that?
That’s not been my experience.
Granted, printers suuuuuck. But I was legit surprised when both the printing and scanning functions in Linux were hands down better than windows.
SAME. Everything prints faster and worked well from day one.
SANE? :D
We raise our CUPS to your pun.
Well played!
Haha, nice.
lol
Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.
Any problem I’ve ever had printing is almost exclusively a problem with the printer, it’s usually yellow or cyan. Doesn’t matter the document is black&white.
It used to back in the day, especially if you tried using shitty windows usb inkjets.
Nowadays basically all printers are network printers (they are, aren’t they?) plus we have cups which is the same thing macos uses (so manufacturers actually care).
HP Laser 107w, driverless, over LAN.
I just Ctrl+P from any software and it prints.
It also prints programmatically (for e.g. folk.computer ) thanks to IPP.
I didn’t have to “think about printing” since I have that setup so I don’t know where you get that sentiment.
Linux printing is very complex. Before Foomatic came along you got to experience it in all it’s glory and setting up a working printing chain was a pain. The Foomatic Wikipedia page has a diagram that will make your head spin.
I think that used to be the case more than it is now. Linux now uses the same printing system (CUPS) as macOS, and macOS printing has to work or Apple’s customers would be unsatisfied.
Printing on Linux has been seamless for me so far, unlike windows and macos
I noticed this too. In theprimeagens recent video on cups problem they kept making jokes about printing on Unix. I think I must be lucky or something cause so far every printer I have setup on Linux has been easier then having to download all the bloatware to make them work on windows. But I have only done about 6 printers so far on Linux.
I’m not sure on this one, but it may depend on the printer. Printing on Linux for me has been the easiest process ever. Windows fights me at every corner, but Linux sees my network printers and they just work out of the box. (I’ve only used Brother printers for the last 20 years)
It used to be much, much more difficult than it is today, but your experiences will still vary according to what type of printer you have. The problem is drivers. There are still printers out there that have no working Linux driver (mostly old, non-Postscript-supporting, with no Mac drivers either). Some will work with a generic driver, but some features aren’t available. The more annoying case is the one where the manufacturer put out a driver once, many years ago, it doesn’t work properly with modern versions of CUPS, and they can’t be arsed to revise it.
But most printers these days will do basic one-sided 100%-size prints out of the box, and that’s all many people need.
As long as your printer is supported, it’s not difficult. The problem is that if you need advanced options, like artists need usually, the options aren’t there.
Printing has basically everywhere been annoying. You need(-ed) specific drivers or even apps to make it work and if you have that set up it still can be annoying. And because most of these drivers/apps don’t support Linux printing relied on reverse engineered drivers. Then CUPS came around which made things better. And when apple adopted CUPS for Mac suddenly everyone wanted to support.
If you are really interested check out this episode of destination Linux where it’s discussed in detail.
my experience is that through network, it’s just flawless. I turned on my printer and sure there it was. (though this feature just became a huge issue recently :P)
thats just cuz printers generally suck
It’s fine now, but getting CUPS installed, configured, and getting proper drivers for your printer used to be incredibly difficult, especially if you were new to Linux and didn’t know how to do any of that stuff.
