Brother supports Linux on all their printers. I have a all-in-one with fax and works great.
Epson stopped supporting Linux 3 years ago.
On Tue, Dec 27, 2022, at 12:06, Rusty Carruth via PLUG-discuss wrote:
> Report on printer compatibility with Linux as experienced today.
>
> I won't bore everyone with all the details (but I will mention this
> whole exercise took many hours of research, plus 2 trips to 3 different
> stores, and the purchase and return of a printer that didn't do fax as I
> wanted), but, I was in the market for a printer to replace my HP color
> laser all-in-one.
>
>
> Why would I replace a really nice HP Color LaserJet? Well, it
> apparently decided that it wouldn't print well any more with non-HP
> carts, and buying a full set of the silly things was in the neighborhood
> of $300 or more, IIRC. (Oh, and the HP instant ink program, which
> looked like a pretty good deal, is ONLY for inkjet printers!)
>
>
> So, I figured I could spend $300 for genuine HP and HOPE it made the
> printer happy, or punt and get a new printer. I went the latter route.
>
>
> After 'much'-ish research, I decided I'd go for a Brother Color Laser
> All-In-One (we require Fax, don't ask why ;-), since Brothers are
> reputed to be excellently-supported on Linux.
>
>
> Found the best price anywhere (the local Staples, believe it or not!)
> and was about to plunk down my card to get it when I realized it was
> going to be around $750 or so for the printer ($400-ish?) and genuine
> Brother carts ($350-ish - sound similar to the HP prices? yeah.).
>
>
> Woah! Ouch! Hey, I'm retired now, that's kinda a shock. Back up,
> regroup, decide to try out the EcoTank idea, something I'd seriously
> considered in the past. Picked an Epson (ET-4800, for like $269 at -
> believe it or not - WalMart (I'm skipping the first purchase which I had
> to return - no fax)), brought it home.
>
>
> Interesting setup method. I downloaded the Epson printer setup app on
> to my Android. All went very well until I tried to enter my WIFI
> password. (First off, it doesn't look like the ET-4800 does 5GHz Wifi,
> only 2.4, so I had to switch my phone over to the 2.4 side. This might
> be an 'issue' with more than my 4800, so beware). I tried it 4 or 5
> times, never got it to work (and the app was very weird - in order to
> re-enter your WiFI password you had to tell it you had done it, then it
> would give you the 'enter password' dialog. Otherwise it was in an
> infinite loop saying it couldn't see the printer yet, did you enter the
> password correctly, did you do it right).
>
> Anyway, after the ink was 'charged', I went to the front panel and
> connected to wifi (just fine, thank you very much, on the first try),
> then suddenly the app saw it and all was well.
>
> My son has Apple stuff and was pretty much immediately able to print.
>
> I went to Epson and looked up Linux print support, downloaded the
> appropriate (in my case) .deb file, installed it and the
> epsonscan2-bundle, fired up my 'Printers' tool, and there it was. I
> didn't even have to search/destroy um, I mean search/install.
>
> Select it, say print test page, immediate print success.
>
>
> On my wife's Linux machine I tried running their 'epsonscan2' program
> and was not impressed. It didn't find the scanner. So, I ran over to
> XSane and simple-scan and both could see it with no problem. I used
> XSane to scan in both BW and color, no problems. Oh, and it knew to let
> me choose the ADF or the flatbed!
>
> At first I thought it didn't have extreme scan resolution, then I
> fiddled in simple-scan and set it to 1200 - whoa! But very slow.
>
> (In the spirit of full disclosure, I'm having a weird problem getting
> scanning to work on my computer, but it works perfectly on my wife's...)
>
> When I did all the above stuff with my HP (long ago in a galaxy far
> away), it worked, but I seem to recall that getting the scanning to work
> was a little more of an issue.
>
>
> On the other hand, I have a much older Epson (from an even longer time
> ago and an even further away galaxy!) that I did have issues with
> finding and setting up, so it looks to me like Epson has improved a lot.
>
>
> Haven't printed much yet, but so far so good.
>
>
> All the above to say that Epson's Linux support worked quite well for
> me this time. Linux is Linux Mint 20.2.
>
> Anybody want to buy an unhappy HP Color LaserJet MFP M281cdw? ;-)
>
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--
Harold Hartley
17632 N. 5th place
Phoenix, AZ 85022
wheelie207@ownmail.net
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