Re: repeat of previous question that has gone unansweredseveraltimes.
On 5/6/23 19:29, Alex King wrote:
Printing on Linux is poor. CUPS is poor. It doesn't work for some (a
lot?) of people.
I have a Brother HL-L2300D printer. It is connected to my (Debian
bullseye) workstation by USB. I have CUPS installed.
My printer prints sometime. Other times, it spins up (makes a noise
like it is about to start printing), but nothing comes out. I can't get
any useful diagnostics to tell me where the problem might be.
There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, IF you are willing to
change the brand name on the printer. But in your case you've already
done that. So now do a search for brotherusa, go there and download
their driver installer, unpack it, run it sudo if needed. It will ask
you for the model # of your printer, enter it EXACTLY, the script will,
if you've net access, goto brothers site, download the exact driver your
printer needs, install it, integrating with cups perfectly but you will
probably need to disable cups-browsed as it will make the default driver
the everywhere driver, crippling 95% of the printers abilities. And
from the machine the printer is plugged into, and assuming browsed is
stopped so you can use the brother driver, it Just Works.
However, if its to be shared, usable from other machines on your local
home network AND your other machines are also running bullseye, and some
of my arm stuff is, something is locking out the discovery of shares by
cups, hence my constant harping about it here. Other Buster machines
Just Work but in my case and to emphasize the point, an rpi4b running
buster works but no banana pi m2 running bullseye can find a printer for
cups. But lpstat -t on that same bpi running bullseye sees them all.
I assume they can print, but thru an lp derivitive that means your Aunt
Tilly has to remember the exact name and all the options that go with
it. And Aunt Tilly will be back on windows next week. She, like I, just
wants HER printer to work.
My parents, who live some distance away have an HP inkjet printer. It
works sometimes. Other times it doesn't. I get it set up so it's
working and it might work for a while, but it will stop working for no
reason. There might be several queues for the printer; some work and
some just don't. A working queue will stop working for no discernible
reason. Working queues will disappear, new queues will appear seemingly
at random. The print system will default to an automatically provided
queue that could never work, because it relies on some software
component that is not installed.... etc... etc...
Between my parents and my own system, I have spent 10s or 100s of hours
trying to get a reliable printing system over decades, with many
different printers. Maybe there were periods where printing worked OK.
But I haven't managed to achieve reliable printing in the medium term.
I read ESR https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html, and my
personal experience is that nothing much has changed in the "driverless"
era.
To me, its been a wholesale slauterhouse since cups was sold to Apple.
The only fix I can see will require that we as a world wide group,
decide to monetarily support a cups like fork, getting away from the if
it doesn't suit Apple, it doesn't happen, influence. TANSTAAFL folks.
If you think the peanuts are free, its time to look at the price of the
beer. Coders like to eat, good ones should be able to afford a longer
ladder up the side of the hog... I can easily afford a $25/anum fee.
What say you?
I've been a sysadmin for 30 odd years, configuring different aspects of
linux (webservers, email servers, DNS, networking, desktop environments
etc.) using open source software. Some problems are difficult to solve,
but I've always found that having a good basic understanding, checking
logs, using tools to confirm what is happening, and doing research on
how things work, allows me to solve those problems eventually.
And I've been roping electrons into doing useful work for about 75 years.
Not so with CUPS and printing. I have tried many different approaches
(e.g. * reinstall from scratch, accept the default packages and default
options. * go to the linux printing site and follow the recommended
method for my model of printer * try to understand how CUPS works, set
up as statically and simply as possible, and use standard tools to
troubleshoot printing failures.) I have not succeeded with any approach.
ditto.
It could be that I have struck certain models of printer with bugs.
Hardware and firmware bugs exist, and not just in printers. However, I
don't find hardware or firmware bugs cause me significant pain as there
are normally software or configuration based work-arounds/allowances for
them in Debian. Except for printers. These same printer models work
much more reliably in MacOS and Windows.
Back in the lpr/lpd days things were more reliable.
They apparently still are, for those with the memory for cli.
Is there a deeper problem affecting printing on linux? I asked work
colleagues and got two responses:
"oh, shit. you’re actually printing from linux. my condolences.', and
"I use Epson and Ubuntu, never had an issue with print over IP - so I
can attest to drivers working from that perspective atleast"
My perspective is that there is a significant issue, at least for a
portion of users.
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. 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."
Thanks,
Alex
On 6/05/23 05:45, Brian wrote:
Your conclusion is that the printing system is in itself is defective
and that is
reflected in your response.
No adverse reflection on Brian, he has been very helpful indeed in
isolating my problems to a broken cups. But neither of us has yet found
whats actually broken.
Take care & stay well everybody.
Cheers, Gene Heskett.
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/>
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