Hai
I was just wondering if anyone has recently bought a printer to run on
Linux. Im after a laser printer (nothing fancy) to works with the CUPS
print server.
Yes I know there are websites that list printers that work with Linux but some Ive found don't work that well or not at all, and some work great.
So whats a good new laser printer thats just does black and white prints.
Just bought a Brother HL-5170DN, there are two models below this, one without network, followed by another without duplexer.
Linux support is good, brother even has linux support pages (which didn't really help me) and a mailbox where you can send linux related questions to.
Setup was easy with the footmatic-gui. You just need the CD to copy the PPD file across.
Just before reading my emails tonight I gave the printer its first real big job, with mixed results: NB i am not a printer guru and recently a laser virgin. I have a bunch of JPEG's that I needed to print and a 25 page OOo document. JPEG's were first using GQview, it printed 2 of them and then stoped.
The printer itself wasn't complaining, foomatic-gui doesn't say jack about printer status so I resulted back the CUPS web interface (http://localhost:631/). It gave me the following error:
Call timed out: server did not respond after 10000 milliseconds closing remote file _stdin_
I cancelled all jobs and restarted, all CGview jobs were pumping out the same error, eventually I tried the OOo document which went through fine (never had a problem with OOo). For the JPEG's I tried The GIMP which printed the image followed by some sort sytax on extra pages. In the end gThumb managed to print the remaining images without complaining.
The above happened on a wireless laptop, AFAIK it's an client issue, nothing to do with the printer.
I haven't yet been able to get the duplex working but have gotten to the point where the printer takes the page back in but doesn't print anything on the other side. Further it would result in missing prints, i.e. no page 2, 4 and 6 (which should of been on the back of the pages 1, 3 and 5).
The only problem I have with the printer itself is that it curles paper. For less then 5 page jobs its not all that much of an issue, but like my 25 document it becomes really difficult to sit the pages squarely together for a decent stable job. It makes the output tray over flow and messy. Although while attempting to duplex, the pages seemed to be ironed out and do not curl at all.
Linux printing link: http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Brother-HL-5170DN
Good luck!
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