On Sun 07 May 2023 at 11:26:05 -0400, gene heskett wrote: > On 5/6/23 19:29, Alex King wrote: > > Printing on Linux is poor. CUPS is poor. It doesn't work for some (a > > lot?) of people. > > > > I have a Brother HL-L2300D printer. It is connected to my (Debian > > bullseye) workstation by USB. I have CUPS installed. > > > > My printer prints sometime. Other times, it spins up (makes a noise > > like it is about to start printing), but nothing comes out. I can't get > > any useful diagnostics to tell me where the problem might be. > > > There is a light at the end of this dark tunnel, IF you are willing to > change the brand name on the printer. But in your case you've already done > that. So now do a search for brotherusa, go there and download their driver > installer, unpack it, run it sudo if needed. It will ask you for the model # > of your printer, enter it EXACTLY, the script will, if you've net access, > goto brothers site, download the exact driver your printer needs, install > it, integrating with cups perfectly but you will probably need to disable > cups-browsed as it will make the default driver the everywhere driver, > crippling 95% of the printers abilities. And from the machine the printer > is plugged into, and assuming browsed is stopped so you can use the brother > driver, it Just Works. > > However, if its to be shared, usable from other machines on your local home > network AND your other machines are also running bullseye, and some of my > arm stuff is, something is locking out the discovery of shares by cups, > hence my constant harping about it here. Other Buster machines Just Work > but in my case and to emphasize the point, an rpi4b running buster works but > no banana pi m2 running bullseye can find a printer for cups. But lpstat -t > on that same bpi running bullseye sees them all.
Please give 'lpstat -t' for bpi51 (bullseye) and a buster machine. > I assume they can print, but thru an lp derivitive that means your Aunt > Tilly has to remember the exact name and all the options that go with it. > And Aunt Tilly will be back on windows next week. She, like I, just wants > HER printer to work. > > > My parents, who live some distance away have an HP inkjet printer. It > > works sometimes. Other times it doesn't. I get it set up so it's > > working and it might work for a while, but it will stop working for no > > reason. There might be several queues for the printer; some work and > > some just don't. A working queue will stop working for no discernible > > reason. Working queues will disappear, new queues will appear seemingly > > at random. The print system will default to an automatically provided > > queue that could never work, because it relies on some software > > component that is not installed.... etc... etc... > > > > Between my parents and my own system, I have spent 10s or 100s of hours > > trying to get a reliable printing system over decades, with many > > different printers. Maybe there were periods where printing worked OK. > > But I haven't managed to achieve reliable printing in the medium term. > > > > I read ESR https://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html, and my > > personal experience is that nothing much has changed in the "driverless" > > era. > > To me, its been a wholesale slauterhouse since cups was sold to Apple. > The only fix I can see will require that we as a world wide group, decide to > monetarily support a cups like fork, getting away from the if it doesn't > suit Apple, it doesn't happen, influence. TANSTAAFL folks. If you think the > peanuts are free, its time to look at the price of the beer. Coders like to > eat, good ones should be able to afford a longer ladder up the side of the > hog... I can easily afford a $25/anum fee. > What say you? Applle ceased any involvement with CUPS development and parted company with its Chief Printing Engineer a number of years ago. Debian CUPS is produced by a team led by the creator of CUPS. Your requested fix is in place :). -- Brian.