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@hazelnot@sunbeam.city@saxnot@chaos.social @mekkaokereke @teadrinker @clive I need to install special drivers and software to use any of the printers available to me, pretty much all of them require hplip and using either the proprietary HP printing app or arcane nonsense in the CUPS web UI to get working
@hazelnot @mekkaokereke @teadrinker
yeah I've heard some horror stories about linux and printers!
me, for whatever reasons, I've been lucky
I use a bog-standard B&W Brother laserjet -- the cheap one that everyone who hates printers recommends you get 
-- and Ubuntu has always had no problem with it
but again, it's a very common printer, so it's no surprise the drivers are kept well up to date
much less likely with a less common printer
@clive @hazelnot @mekkaokereke @teadrinker
Brother provides drivers for Linux. Things just work. My Linux laptops and Windows desktop just finds it effortlessly on the network. Mine has been going strong for eight years.
@clive @mekkaokereke @teadrinker Yeahhh unfortunately all the printers I have available are either HP or Samsung (who sold their printer division to HP) 
@hazelnot @mekkaokereke @teadrinker @clive I got a nice 400 series HP laserjet from 2015 and ended all further messing around with printers. It speaks postscript, job done.
@errant @mekkaokereke @teadrinker @clive I still don't really understand what postscript is or does other than "programming language for printers"
@hazelnot @mekkaokereke @teadrinker @clive Yes, its exactly that, but the crucial part is that its standards based and agreed on by both the computer and printer. No weird proprietary protocol like they jam onto "consumer" grade printers.
@errant @mekkaokereke @teadrinker @clive oh huh, I didn't know HP even made printers that don't require you to jump through 1000 hoops and make an account just to print a goddamn PDF
@hazelnot @mekkaokereke @teadrinker @clive In fact a PDF is a postscript document in a container, PDF stands for Postscript Document Format. You can, and I have, just toss a PDF straight in to the print queue and if the printer speaks postscript it will print it directly with no processing by the computer.