Kleene, Steven (kleenesj) wrote:
If you are able, please recommend a black-and-white Postscript laser printer that will work well with Debian (Bookworm). After 29 years, I'm finally, and sadly, giving up on my HP LaserJet 5MP. At work I had problems with Linux drivers for a Xerox laser, and I'm trying to avoid that. Some Reddit posts favor Brother.
Decades ago, before desktop laser printers were even a thing, my typewriter dealer regarded Brother as not terribly reliable or easy to service. But of course, that was typewriters; daisywheel typewriters, but still typewriters (I still have the Silver-Reed Penman he sold me; it was in good working order the last time it was turned on).
My own laser printers have all been HPs (B&W, but nothing newer than a 2100-series) and Samsungs (color), but I think we did have a small Brother laser printer around the office at one point, that worked reasonably well.
The one time I bought a Xerox laser printer (color), it went right back to Staples within 24 hours of arrival: it claimed to be a PostScript machine, but was incapable of actually parsing a PS data stream (it expected the host computer to do the RIPping for it), and in real life, it was far bulkier, heavier, and noisier than it had looked "on paper."
Quite frankly, I'd rather keep my HP 2100M and my Samsung 415 than anything currently in production, and I recently had the 415 overhauled, at more than the cost of replacing it with a more recent model.
-- JHHL