At my workplace we have sketchy-looking unsigned Applescripts to install printers on Macs. You have to find the right file for the printer you want to install, and run it, or ask IT to do it for you.
It’s not ideal, but everyone that tries to improve the printing experience ends up ragequitting. Last I heard, someone in IT was looking into some sort of “print anywhere” solution where you just install one virtual printer driver and print to it, then scan your badge at any printer to see all your print jobs and print them. Not sure what the status is with that though - haven’t heard about it for a while.
I thought I saw that Mac has the same CUPS print service/printer manager that Linux uses? In fact it seems like apple developed it. I think that helps enormously with standardizing printer configs. www.cups.org/doc/admin.html
I think it does; it’s just automated installation of new printers that’s an issue as far as I know. Not 100% sure since I’m a software developer rather than an IT support person, so I never deal with stuff like that.
Enterprise grade MFD printers often have a lot of features that don’t get detected/mapped automatically, such as finishing options like staples and folding, as well as color management. I’m not a printer expert, I try to avoid them when possible, but I know that mass deploying those specific configurations in a safe and sane way seems basically impossible.
On the Fedora-based Linux machines, however, all of that seems to just pop in automatically, so I don’t think it’s a CUPS problem.
Has anyone had luck or experience with using IPP for printing from Linux? A standard networking protocol for printing sounds like it should make a lot of these problems mute.
No joke, printing is like the #1 thing I like most about switching from Windows to Linux. I still get errors about the bypass tray every time I try to print from Windows. I’M NOT USING THE BYPASS TRAY!
Yeah I switched to LMDE a couple months ago and I plugged in my printer for the first time but long ago. I was worried it wouldn’t work at first but it started printing right away!
I have a pair of LaserJet 2200dn printers, they work absolutely fine in any Linux distro but I just have to make sure to use the below driver in my case:
HP LaserJet 2200 Foomatic/lj4dith (grayscale, 2-sided printing)
If I use the default or hpcups drivers it takes fucking forever (over an hour!) to process the pages. Essentially if given the option go for the lj4dith driver for your LaserJet
Add comment