Bought a new brother laser printer (fuck hp inkjet), decided to print something on Windows. Typical Windows could detect the printer even though it shows up in the network section as a device. Downloads and install barebone driver from brother website still refuses to work. Logged in to Linux mint 1 second later “New Brother DCP-L235DW printer has been added”. I wasted more than half an hour trying to print something on Windows and on Linux didn’t even need a single click to configure the printer.
I dont use Linux much, but when it come to Linux it just works without doing anything (atleast on mint).
Just want say how Windows sucks, even my phone was able to print without additional software.
I had a similar situation.
I had an old laser printer that was officially unsupported on OS X. Meaning that they had a driver for OS X for a similar model, but not exactly the same model, that supposedly worked for it, but they deliberately did not let you use it with my model of printer. Found some crazy instructions online that told you to install the drivers, then change the driver with a hex editor to force it to recognize your printer as a different model. It worked, occasionally, intermittently. I spend like half a week trying to get it to work under OS X and it just wouldn’t work reliably.
Tried a Windows computer. Wasted half a day installing a driver, uninstalling a driver, plugging in, unplugging, turning on, turning off, but it just couldn’t recognize it.
Booted into Linux and hit “print” and it worked perfectly. Didn’t even need to install a driver.
I have an HP printer, unfortunately, but it is what it is.
Linux prints and scans no problem, setup was as easy as picking the printer from the list.
The windows laptop kicking around here will not. No matter what I try, I cannot make it work.
Have a relative that just got a new laptop with Windows 11, but their printer wouldn’t work with it. It was a fairly old thing, but it worked fine on Windows 10. Turns out, the manufacturer no longer distributes the driver directly, and instead just shares it through Windows Update, which would be super convenient, except the driver is only listed for Windows 10 devices, and won’t install on Windows 11. So dumb.
Printers have always been an issue, especially recently. They love their home-grown (likely inaccessible, I might add) UIs. We had an HP and it was a complete shitshow - the Windows driver would crash whatever app invoked the print dialog for the second time. HP suggested installing their app from the Microsoft store - absolute garbage as you might imagine.
Shit worked flawlessly with Linux.
I replaced the heap of steaming shit with a Xerox Laser printer. Given their corporate background they have less weird shit going on, and that did pay off for my wife’s Windows machine. Oh boy, is it still so much more reliable under Linux. I need to install a PPD, which means digging into the CUPS management and things could definitely use improvement there (it works flawlessly, but it’s confusing and ugly).
Scanning is sometimes a little hit-and-miss though.