Older printers' support
Older printers' support
Posted Jun 6, 2021 7:40 UTC (Sun) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118)Parent article: Fedora contemplates the driverless printing future
- unkillable ones, working for decades
- trash one, which gets replaced every 2-3 years
I think users are mainly concerned about losing support for the first kind. But there's also a lot of a grey area.
I personally "manage" two printers. One represents first kind - it's a LaserJet 6L, over 20 years old at this point. I haven't seen more solid device, works with every Linux distribution, replacement toner is dirt-cheap. I feel it will work for another 20 years easily.
The other printer is a multifunction HP MFP1132, about 6-8 years old today. According to the proposed change, it should be "driverless". It isn't. I need to manually download "hp-plugin" binary crap every time the driver - hplip - get's updated. Without the binary blob, neither printing nor scanning works.
Naturally, when I see assurances "printers made in last 10 years work flawlessly" but I'm looking at one which doesn't, I'm not believing assurances that my 6L will continue working.
Posted Jun 6, 2021 9:05 UTC (Sun)
by Jonno (subscriber, #49613)
[Link]
I got a HP Color LaserJet MFP M281, which has the same problem: hplip requires the proprietary hp-plugin to work. However, using the cups-filter "driverless" driver (and presumably the CUPS "everywhere" driver), I could use IPP Everywhere to talk directly to the printer, bypassing hplip completely. Without hplip SANE won't work, but I just use the controls on the printer to scan, which saves a tiff on my Samba server (it can also save a pdf instead of a tiff, or send the file [pdf or tiff] over email if you prefer that), which works without any drivers.
If you only have one printer on the local network, the following commands should do the trick, if you got multiple printers, you need to manually pick the right URI from the ippfind output:
Posted Jun 6, 2021 12:35 UTC (Sun)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (2 responses)
At the end of the day, proprietary crap that requires binary blobs to work is still proprietary crap, and you're forever at the manufacturer's mercy when it comes to ongoing updates.
With respect to your 6L specifically, the very first pappl example was written for PCL printers such as yours. Additionally, the 6L is already well supported by Gutenprint, and that support will carry over to the future Gutenprint printer application.
(Note the exact quote is "98% of printers sold since 2010", not "all printers made in the last 10 years" -- most of what I work with is part of one of those "certain verticals" in that 2%)
Posted Jun 6, 2021 13:43 UTC (Sun)
by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118)
[Link] (1 responses)
But for Hewlett Packard MFP1132… this is basic home printer with a scanner, nothing fancy. I'm surprised it isn't in 98%.
Posted Jun 7, 2021 10:45 UTC (Mon)
by mchehab (subscriber, #41156)
[Link]
Those cheap USB-only laser scanner/printers don't have IPP natively. I have one such printer too, as the cost per page on such devices is very low.
Using it as a network printer is tricky, as the default support via hplip requires a proprietary x86-only driver, which require upgrades almost every time CUPS is upgraded. Also, as it is x86-only, one can't use a cheap arm device like RPi to be a printer server, and, last time I checked, the alternative of using foo2zjs driver won't provide sane support over the network.
Older printers' support
>$ URI=$(ippfind)
>$ sudo lpadmin -p «PrinterName» -o printer-is-shared=false -v ${URI} -m driverless:${URI} -E
Older printers' support
Older printers' support
Older printers' support