Linux

I have a Postscript 3 compatible ipp network color laser printer for about 15 years now and it works without any issues with Linux, way better then it does from Windows. So I never understood way they say that printing is cumbersome with Linux.

Because printing in Linux both works and is supported and not supported and hope that there are drivers and they work.

For example, I have a brother printer and in both arch and Ubuntu/mint the printer worked out of the box. But I was missing features like double sided printing. So I had to download drivers for it.

In arch the drivers were on the AUR, so I was printing is seconds.

In Ubuntu/mint they weren’t in my package manager, so I had to go to brother’s website and hope they had drivers. Brother did and while it took a bit it did work too. No worse than windows.

For basic document printing it's been great but for doing fancy print jobs it's tough on any os depending on the printer and support. My wife makes stickers and notebooks and got a fancy Epson printer and going windows Mac and Linux it was a pain. She finally got it down on her windows machine.

Even the documentation was terrible. It told her for duplex prints she would have to manually move the paper but once she figured it out it was all automatic. Youtube guides were even worse since they said it wasn't even possible on that model

I haven't used a new printer or an inkjet in a number of years now, but using my 18yo HP laserjet is a matter of plugging it in and checking it's status under the main distro settings menu. That was also on par with the windows process iirc.

I do remember 20 years ago when I had to sideload pcmcia wifi drivers, though.

My Xerox works way better than on osx.

An u until live CD will find my decade old HP laser and print to it without any work.

Getting my NIXOS to print at the same printer? About an hour.

when you buy a printer, just look that it says it's for linux, just like you would for windows or osx. people just sometimes run into problems when they retrofit printers for other OSes to work with linux. there's a good chance a windows printer can work with linux, but it's not guaranteed, so do it only, if you got one for free or it originally had been bought for another PC.

Recently ran into an issue with Endeavour OS where the built in printer program would give errors when trying to add my network ecotank printer.

Tried using cups terminal and it worked the first time, and is still working weeks later.

So some of the GUI printer apps that distros ship with have issues apparently, but I don't know the extent of it.

It depends on the brand I guess. Some Canon Pixma did immediately worked with my distro, like literally zero setup required. However, it refuses duplexing. It just won't do it. Not driverless and not with gutenprint, although it lists the specific model, not when setting it as the default, not when setting it per job.

Yet it works on Android no problem.

If you have a hp printer they got a official software for it

My brother needed the driver installed in debian on Qubes but has been flawless beyond that. When I was still running arch it just worked out of the box

Funny thing is, I don't own a printer, so when I need documents printed I go to the local library. Their computers run Linux, and of all the times I've gone to get a print done it's been an extremely flawless experience. No fuss, no hassle, just load up the document and print it.

I've never bien able to get printing to work on arch, void or nixos.

For some reason though debian, fedora, open s'use ans their derivatives have been easier than on windows