Brother printer questions

My partner and I are thinking about getting a Brother laser printer for home use in the near future. How difficult is it to get a newer model working in a Linux ecosystem? Are there any specific drivers we should look into installing, if a specific driver isn't available for the model we end up getting? Any advice for connecting it to our network?

EDIT: Thank you all for the feedback! It seems that generally you all have had decent experiences with Brother on Linux, depending on the distro, and that there are resources out there to help with any issues that might come up.

philpo ,

While the Linux integration wasn’t a huge deal for me I just wanted to add one point: Be aware of the fine dust situation laser printer create and why some people are having issues. For home use a inkjet is sometimes preferrable if one can’t position it right (as we often can’t at home)

Sadly at least in the last test I read Brother was one of the worst offenders together with HP.

(I still have one but keep it in my office away from the living areas)

MiddledAgedGuy ,

As an outlier in skimming the other comments. Mine wasn’t great.

I replaced it a few years ago, so I’m working from incomplete memory here, but here’s what I recall. I had a Brother laser printer. I don’t recall the model. The drivers were binary, only available for x86/x86_64, and only packaged in deb and rpm. Which certainly covers most cases, but it’s still limiting.

I saw in another comment some only support GDI. I bet that was the case for me.

I think a good takeaway from this isn’t to not buy Brother, but to check support for the model you’re looking at beforehand.

RoboRay ,
@RoboRay@kbin.social avatar

I have a 20 year old B&W Brother laser and a 2 year old color Brother laser... both just work automatically in Linux without needing any setup, configuration, or drivers.

walden ,

I have a Brother HL-L2380DW that has been going strong for years. I love it. I can’t remember, but I think Linux Mint just picked it up no problem, and added it to the printers. In the past, I do remember installing drivers from Brother, but I’ve recently done some clean installs and I want to say I didn’t have to do all that. My memory is foggy, though.

DoWotJohn ,

I have a Brother HL-L2395DW. My computer finds it on my wireless network immediately and it just works. I didn’t need to install anything.

IncidentalIncidence ,

My HL2030 is incredibly easy to use from Linux

Redderthanmisty ,

In my experience, Brother printers have been the best. Litterally just Plug 'n play. I got a cheaper laser printer from them that only connects via USB, but I had no issue in setting it up with a raspberry pi running CUPS to get network-wide access that all my devices automatically recognise with no need for any manual setup by end users.

synthllama ,

Brother laser printers are great. As long as you get one that supports Postscript (Brother calls this BR-Script), PCL5 or PCL6. You can see this under the “emulations” printing specs on a printer model page. PostScript and PCL both have fully open source implementations so you’ll usually be able to just use built-in CUPS gutenprint or foomatic drivers. I also recommend ethernet (wired or wireless) and not usb.

Do not get one that only says “GDI” emulations which is Windows based and can be really painful to deal with.

superkret ,

If you think about getting a specific model, go to Brother’s driver download page and check if there’s a Linux driver for it before you buy.

newIdentity ,

Don’t. You’d probably be fine with Ubuntu or Fedora since they’re officially supported by Brother, but if you want to use something different, preper to struggle… a lot

I tried to set up the DCP-7055W on Arch before just giving up and using my phone

SenXEk ,

Driver for DCP-7055W is available on AUR

DCP-7055W

newIdentity ,

Tried that but it simply doesn’t work

And I’m not the only one with this issue. Read the comment

abrasiveteapot ,

Did you check the wiki ? If you look that model up on

wiki.archlinux.org/…/Printer-specific_problems you check the wiki ?

And click on brlaser (the default driver) you’ll find a comment pointing to a fork of the driver

github.com/Owl-Maintain/brlaser

Hope that helps. If you’d already gone through that then sorry to waste your time

newIdentity ,

Wow. Thanks. Didn’t knew that. I tried for hours but could only find a manual installation guide for the property drivers that dint work . Will try this out

abrasiveteapot ,

No prob.

In my opinion always check the arch wiki if you’re having problems, even if you’re not running Arch, it’s a gobsmackingly good repository of linux knowledge

newIdentity ,

I did but I only found a different article that is related to that issue but straight up doesn’t work for this printer

Oh, and it’s in German and hasn’t been updated in a few years

Nioxic ,

I have linux mint. It just instantly finds my brother printer on install, as soon as it connects to my network

I have an L2340dw model. Nothing new and fancy. But its been rock solid for almost 10 years now. Cost me 100 euros.

manned_meatball ,
@manned_meatball@lemmy.ml avatar

I got the HL-L2325DW last year. Connecting it to the WiFi using WPS was really easy. Making the desktop see it was a bit of trial and error, but it was partially thanks to the PDF viewer I was using, so I’d recommend printing from a well established viewer like Okular or the web browser, at least for the first use.

I don’t remember having to download any drivers manually from their website btw, I just chose it from the list when setting up a new printer. This process might change with the distro and desktop environment though, I’m using Kubuntu.

In fact, if you’re a bit lucky, the printer might even show up as a “discovered device” after you connect it to your network, even with a suggested driver and connection so you just need to press next.

happyhippo ,

Kubuntu is great for out of the box printer detection, as are Fedora and Mint, in my experience.

Some distros may force you through some obstacles though, and in my experience (opensuse) you may have to allow mdns/ipp protocols in your firewall rules for local device discovery and communication.

Apart from that I’d argue that setting up a modern printer on Linux is pretty much plug n play nowadays, since most should support driverless printing at this point.

hombre_fundido ,

I have two printers a HL-L2350DW b&w laser printer and a label printer. The laser printer is connected to our wifi and is detected in Fedora and Ubuntu without having to install additional drivers.

polskilumalo ,
@polskilumalo@lemmygrad.ml avatar

Checkout the Open Source brlaser driver and the list of printers it supports. I have a MFC–L2712DW and it works amazingly out of the box.

jbrains ,

My HL2170W just works. I have every reason to believe its current replacement would just work. I don’t even know which drivers I’m using. Good luck.

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