Re: repeat of previous question that has gone unansweredseveraltimes.
On 06/05/2023 20:02, Alex King wrote:
Implying the user is at fault (which Brian isn't necessarily doing
here,) or acting surprised when someone has trouble printing, is like
gaslighting. Maybe it works OK for you, but please understand that is
not the general case.
Take not of this, it'll be important later.
Debian can't support every printer for every
user, but knowing that, CUPS should come with a health warning: "We
supply this software as-is in the knowledge that it has known faults,
and will not work reliably for all users. We wish there were a way that
Debian users could reliably print, but there is not. You may get some
help on Debian User, but in general printing is not supported."
This proposal is as bad as what you criticized in the first quoted
segment. It might say the opposite, but it's still an overly wide
generalization.
Pretty much everything in Debian is provided as-is and with no
warranties (it's explicitly said so in the license), but the maintainers
do try to make the software work as well as possible (and other people
can step in if the maintainer is unresponsive).
Since we're talking about anecdotes, I have a very similar printer to
yours (a Brother MF-2470DW - I believe the engine is basically the same,
but my model has a scanner and maybe fax), and I've used it with cups
with no issues for years, both with the Brother proprietary driver and
lately with the "driverless" feature (which should really be called
"universal driver" or something like that, but that's another issue).
Before that, I've had at least three other printers (Lexmark, HP and one
that I can't remember) that also worked with no problems. This doesn't
prove anything, but neither do your bad experiences.
I'd guess that more people can print than can't (provided the printer is
supported), so even if "cups works fine and printing is supported" isn't
always correct, it's probably more correct than "in general printing is
not supported".
--
Not everything worth doing is worth doing well.
Eduardo M KALINOWSKI
eduardo@kalinowski.com.br
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