i need some help buying a monochrome laser printer with scanning that supports linux, plug and play is a nice thing to have.
🖨️ my available brands are : Epson, cannon and brother
❌ no need for WiFi, fax ,ect
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The cheapest brother laser printer is the one to get.
am i not missing anything from the higher priced ones besides apps and wifi ?
You’re getting slightly slower print speed. 27ppm vs 32 or 36 for the HL-2300D.
honestly, laser is laser, higher prices are usually stuffs like, integrated scan or bigger paper capacity, mostly added features rather than print quality.
For the plug and play, you probably are still going to have to pick a driver during installation, most of the time, drivers for older model the same class of printer will work
fake ex: PAPERLOVE CFG-3420D will work fif you have a PAPERLOVE CFG-3520D
the reason i don’t want to install drivers is the automatic forced updates, you know the kind that HP does to break their printer, i have got into linux to get away from that shit not to go back to it
I think hp and windows rotted the way you view drivers, what I call drivers are just what your computer use to communicate with devices, they aren’t software suite that updates and ask for your account, drivers are like 2kb text files with a index of available function and what signal to sent to the printer for it to print, what you see as drivers is the heavy and predatory spyware they ship with printer to steal your data and make you spend more miney, when you install a printer on linux (especially brother) you are just getting the little file with the printer’s language, depending on your distro, it will give you a big ass list of available drivers to use with the printer you just connected, it won’t ever ask you to update or even try to communicate with the internet, since it’s a passive file that your computer use and not a program that is launched, those files are available on windows btw, the manufacturers just make them very hard to get for obvious reasons, and windows itself will install the spyware as if it’s a driver through windows update, one of the many reason I fucked off of it
Also, to be fair, HP has download link to windows drivers only but they heavily push the windows crapware suite download links on their site.
They probably do but I have a vague work memory of a model of personal printer that forced me to go look through the driverstore folder of another computer with the spyware installed because they didn’t offer anything else but their program which couldn’t be launched in the env I had to do it in
Yeah, only their “professional” lines are ok.
You always need a driver. What you don’t want is a driver that’s malware. Brother is the best brand in that regard, but unfortunately becoming worse too.
This is what i did.
9 years ago. Still runs like new. Great little thing!
Its 100% wireless though. But connects to my router and then everything on the LAN can print
Mine isn’t wireless, but yeah I got it probably 10 years ago too - still runs like new, never broken down, actually works better in Linux than it does in Windows, and I think it’s only on it’s 2nd-3rd toner cartridge ever.
adding to the brother upvotes - well supported on linux. the hardware and consumables are reasonably priced and decent quality with minimal or no DRM on most lines. very much what HP used to be 30 years ago.
so no restrictions on toner brand? and what about automatic updates do i have an option to opt out ?
I have not used their B&W for a while, so I cannot personally attest to DRM specifically on their monochrome lines, I am currently using the MFC-L9570CDW and updates are not forced. brother has been pretty slow to roll out draconian DRM, though I have heard of it in some colour lines. most brother monochrome lines (from reports I have heard) do not restrict toner replacements - someone correct me if they have personal experience otherwise.
brother support and sales have been pretty good in my experience. give them a call and ask specific questions. in dealing with them I have always gotten honest, straight answers.
edit: remove stray number from model.
I have a color model and it has some mild DRM around toner that can be silenced - so more of a warning
I have a brother works fine on linux mint
You literally can’t go wrong with a Brother b&w laser printer.
Get Brother. Epson works but it’s more fiddly, I haven’t tried a Canon in a long time.
Canon is fine, mostly.
Brother is always best.
