Appreciation post - Linux, Brother printer/scanner, GNOME and open standards

Posted by Hasty0174@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 31 comments

Needed to print and scan, no printer at home. Did some research all morning, came to the conclusion out of Brother, Canon, Epson or HP that Brother was going to be the least troublesome and seemed to follow open standard better than others with proprietary drivers and/or up-selling subscriptions/other junk.

After setting up the printer and connecting it to Wi-Fi, my Fedora Workstation install had already picked up the printer and added it with zero fuss. Moving to scanning, while I am somewhat technical and can appreciate applications with high-level settings/functions, getting the basics right is always a challenge and I fundamentally believe the Document Scanner application in GNOME has done that. It was so simple to scan pages in from the various sources on the printer and configure the most relevant settings without any additional 'fluff'.

Amazing results, this is what I love to see.

TL;DR -

Brother printers are awesome.

Linux is awesome.

GNOME is awesome.

[-]

DataPath@reddit

What part of the software did Apple develop?

Surely not CUPS. that predates apple by a wide margin, and they contributed little of substance after they brought it under their umbrella.

[-]

spazturtle@reddit

Apple and HP developed the wireless extension to CUPS which Apple calls Airprint, HP and some other printer companies then made their own modified version of it that uses mDNS instead of Bonjour and called it Mopria.

[-]

DataPath@reddit

Huh. I've never used air print. I've never heard of Mopria.

I looked up what the service names for those are, and my brother networked laser printer advertises neither of those.

[-]

lilguy2002@reddit

This is such a bizarre reply. AirPrint is Apple's name for the feature that exists in their OSes. Bonjour is the specific software that powers it and other wireless printing features, but companies are never going to say "We support Bonjour!" You don't see cars advertised as "It drives on roads!"

[-]

DataPath@reddit

You misunderstand. I performed a network scan for mdns services on my network with identifiers that match those corresponding with Mopria or airplay. Those are called service advertisements. No such services are advertised, so no airplay on my network, and no Mopria.

[-]

lilguy2002@reddit

How am I the one misunderstanding when I didn't say a single solitary thing about AirPrint or Mopria existing on your network? Are you fucking illiterate?

[-]

DataPath@reddit

Chill dude. I replied to a guy suggesting that brother printers work seamlessly because of airprint/Mopria, and I said neither of those are running on my brother printer .

If what he says isn't what he meant, he has a chance to clarify. I didn't see anything bizarre there . I have you the benefit of the doubt and assumed a misunderstanding, but no, apparently that's just the way you are.

Best of luck, buddy.

[-]

lilguy2002@reddit

I already clarified this to you TWICE. AirPrint and Mopria are brand names. They are not the names of the underlying technology. We are talking about the underlying technology, not any one specific branded implementation. You will not ever see the name "AirPrint" unless you are using an Apple product. That has nothing to do with whether or not your printer uses Bonjour under the covers.

Don't pretend you have the moral high ground here when you're an absolute crybaby child lying and misrepresenting the discussion for the sole purpose of refusing to admit you're wrong. Just the absolute scum of the earth.

[-]

spazturtle@reddit

Those are the two most common full featured implementations of IPP over a network. You might also see IPP Everywhere which is a simpler implementation that is also based on AirPrint but doesn't support scanning.

LumenAstralis@reddit

Get the ink tank version and you are set for life.

Spritke@reddit

Brother is great

AnsibleAnswers@reddit

I love my brother 3-in-1 laser printer. Reliable, easy set up, just does its job and never complains.

Message to Brother: if you decide to enshittify your printers, I will hate you more than I hate HP and never stop talking about it. Don’t fuck up a good thing.

Hasty0174@reddit (OP)

Na, nothing can be as bad as HP surely.

The funny thing is that Apple and HP developed the software that you are using to print wirelessly from Linux to your Brother printer.

Ha! That is too funny.

Shap6@reddit

they've already slighty enshitified. their toner cartridges have a little "genuine brother" checking chip on it that third party toner needs to fake to make it work on newer printers which adds cost to the toner replacements

ad-on-is@reddit

which one do you have? I'm in the market for a new 3-in1 laser as well. My 10yo HP just sucks

prosper_0@reddit

I have an early 2000's Brother MFC printer. The thing just works. Needs a new drum, though, and I can probably get a whole replacement 'slightly used' printer for the price :/

undrwater@reddit

You may be able to buy an after market drum for relatively cheap.

wpm@reddit

Honestly all of this is on Brother for making good printers. IPP Print Everywhere and zeroconf/multicast DNS are what makes all of this possible. My Brother MFC gets picked up automatically on macOS and Windows for printing and scanning too.

dnabre@reddit

I bought a Brother laser printer over 20 years ago, when I started grad school (my previous printer didn't survive the cross country move). I picked up an HL-5170N, pretty full featured for its time - b&w laser, duplex, 100base-t networking, parallel port, and USB. Most importantly it talks Postscript. Still working perfectly to this day, and never had an OS I couldn't get to work with it.

Mr_Lumbergh@reddit

Brother is the way to go. I have a network laser printer/scanner that I seamlessly print to from my Debian (KDE ;)) box, Macbook, Windows work machine, and iPhone. I used to be a fan of Canon because of the individual color cartridges, but they've really enshittified in the last 10 years or so.

Gr83st@reddit

My Brother HL-L5100DN laser printer works out of the box on Debian 13 and Fedora 43. It did not work on OpenSUSE Slowroll due to the strict firewall. So yes, the distribution is a major contributor to the printer being supported.

Isidore-Tip-4774@reddit

Brother est fantastique pour les linuxiens

Gugalcrom123@reddit

I also have a Brother inkjet printer with scanner and it worked perfectly on GNU/Linux Mint. It is easier to get printing than on Windows.

soundgravy@reddit

Exact opposite here. Yeah, the (brother) printer auto-installed. But it completely stalls whenever i send a job to it.

Whereas, in Windows you press print - and it rolls without issue, immediately.

I was able to fix it by installing the driver from brothers own page, but it is a bit illogical.

NGRhodes@reddit

Brother are an engineering focused company, with a significant share of revenue from B2B and business/industrial customers. These customers often prioritise reliability and long-term stability over cutting edge or consumer-friendly features.

Their support for Linux reflects the need for broad compatibility in enterprise and industrial environments, where devices are often integrated into networked systems (e.g. print servers, label printers, packing slips) rather than single-PC consumer setups.

Natural_Night9957@reddit

GNOME

Mi casa es su casa? Microsoft's casa? Let's agree to disagree.

AndyceeIT@reddit

I did the same thing maybe 18 years ago and picked a Brother laser printer.

Besides being a great printer, perfect results from Ubuntu 8.10 onwards

LocationReady788@reddit

Ho su Linux ha di bello hplip con relativa gui, Solo che con l'azienda non mi sono mai durare più di 3 anni. Brother non le ho mai prese, ma tra qualche mese la prenderò anch'io, buono a sapersi che funzionano bene con Linux, uso Linux Mint e opensuse come sistemi operativi principali.

Per le scansioni anche multi pagina puoi usare xsane al lancio del programma rileva direttamente lui gli scanner presenti sia via USB che in rete, se interessa ho scritto uno script poi per ridurre il peso del PDF che si va a creare che ho postato anche su GitHub.

mats_o42@reddit

I migrated from my beloved HP laserjet 4M+ to a 3550 and I must say it's almost a modern HP.
Just drivers, no nags and it works. It does have two dirty tricks - chipped toners and a page limit (Brother do document how to reset that though)