Linux

Drivers.

It’s fine now, but getting CUPS installed, configured, and getting proper drivers for your printer used to be incredibly difficult, especially if you were new to Linux and didn’t know how to do any of that stuff.

My brother needed the driver installed in debian on Qubes but has been flawless beyond that. When I was still running arch it just worked out of the box

IDK, my housemates printer required literally 0 setup to work with my linux VM and I've never had an issue. When I print from windows it's a pain in the butt sometimes.

It depends... 3d printing works fine :D

It was terrible in the 90's. Since CUPS became standard around 2000 it's significantly easier.

Recently ran into an issue with Endeavour OS where the built in printer program would give errors when trying to add my network ecotank printer.

Tried using cups terminal and it worked the first time, and is still working weeks later.

So some of the GUI printer apps that distros ship with have issues apparently, but I don't know the extent of it.

It used to back in the day, especially if you tried using shitty windows usb inkjets.

Nowadays basically all printers are network printers (they are, aren't they?) plus we have cups which is the same thing macos uses (so manufacturers actually care).

My migration to Linux Mint coincided with getting a Brother Laser printer (DCP-L3520CDW) and I've had zero issues with text, photos or scanning. I just fired up the Brother and Mint said "oh, you've got a printer, wanna use it?"

That's not my experience. Bought a new Brother MFC the other day. Hooked it up to the Wifi. All Linux machines in the house can automatically print and scan without any additional setup needed.

apt purge cups-* libcups* libppd*

Thank me later.

I'm hooked on my brother with a wifi print server now. All three major OS in our house, I just make sure the printer stays updated. Not sure how to print photos, though.

I only print docs and pictures. But in my opinion printing on Linux is largely better than Windows. It just works most of the time. And if there is an issue the solution is generally restarting the job.

Printing is a bitch no matter the platform and its usually the producers of the printers that fail. Everyone wants to make their own standard or interpret any standard in their own way. Duplex settings? Sometimes easy to find, and sometimes called something else and put in a weird spot of the interface.

Basic printing to usb is fine on Linux. My pi zero hooked to a brother laser has been providing wifi printing for me for the last 5 years. Installed cups and connected the usb and it was rocking

Any problem I've ever had printing is almost exclusively a problem with the printer, it's usually yellow or cyan. Doesn't matter the document is black&white.

My Xerox works way better than on osx.

when you buy a printer, just look that it says it's for linux, just like you would for windows or osx. people just sometimes run into problems when they retrofit printers for other OSes to work with linux. there's a good chance a windows printer can work with linux, but it's not guaranteed, so do it only, if you got one for free or it originally had been bought for another PC.

For basic document printing it's been great but for doing fancy print jobs it's tough on any os depending on the printer and support. My wife makes stickers and notebooks and got a fancy Epson printer and going windows Mac and Linux it was a pain. She finally got it down on her windows machine.

Even the documentation was terrible. It told her for duplex prints she would have to manually move the paper but once she figured it out it was all automatic. Youtube guides were even worse since they said it wasn't even possible on that model

The Canon Pixma has always problematic for me with driver issues.

I had a Samsung colour laser printer, they provided driver for linux, I installed them, everything works, full support for settings etc

Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.

This has been my experience also. My Brother printer/scanner works great with linux.

I’m not sure on this one, but it may depend on the printer. Printing on Linux for me has been the easiest process ever. Windows fights me at every corner, but Linux sees my network printers and they just work out of the box. (I’ve only used Brother printers for the last 20 years)

Printing has basically everywhere been annoying. You need(-ed) specific drivers or even apps to make it work and if you have that set up it still can be annoying. And because most of these drivers/apps don’t support Linux printing relied on reverse engineered drivers. Then CUPS came around which made things better. And when apple adopted CUPS for Mac suddenly everyone wanted to support.

If you are really interested check out this episode of destination Linux where it’s discussed in detail.

I have a HP printer and printing is never a smooth process. No idea why, but it takes me 5/10 minutes each time

That's not been my experience.

Granted, printers suuuuuck. But I was legit surprised when both the printing and scanning functions in Linux were hands down better than windows.