Oh God, this brought back a traumatic memory. I was hanging out after hours at our office to look after a meetup group that was using our space that night. Nothing tricky, make sure people can get in, keep the lights on, make sure nobody sets the place on fire.
I was plugging away on my personal laptop which had Linux on it. Having a great time doing something or other when one of the meetup organisers approached me with a USB stick and asked if I could help them print out some signs to help people know where to go.
My install was rock solid, fast and set up exactly the way I wanted, but in that moment none of that mattered because it was me who froze. I thought back to all the decisions that lead me to that situation, even the conversation with a coworker a few months ago about Linux who literally said “I love Linux but one day I’m just afraid I’ll have to print something or whatever and I won’t be able to”. How foolish I was to dismiss the wisdom in his words that day, and now my worst nightmare had come to pass.
I swallowed hard, looked the organiser in the eyes, and told them I couldn’t help them. I didn’t even try. Best to rip the band-aid off, disappoint them now and get it over with. After the glaring admission left my mouth I waited for the inevitable response. I was a fraud, nothing more than a self proclaimed computer geek who couldn’t accomplish a rudimentary task despite all my time studying and tinkering. It was over, I guess it wasn’t imposter syndrome after all, I really was an imposter and now I’d been discovered.
But instead the the organiser just smiled and said “that’s totally ok, we were just a bit disorganised and didn’t print it before coming this time. Thanks for your help anyway!” And everything was fine. This time.
Now that brother, is storytelling.
I would have tried anyway. Sometimes Linux works better with printing than Windows, some times the other way round. It just depends what the printer is and how you have your system setup.
Just say how it is. “I can try but printers are notorious for making simple things difficult.”
Yeah exactly. Chances are it would have worked provided they installed CUPS - which isn’t hard or slow on arch after all it’s not Gentoo. But if it didn’t at least you have defused expectations while showing you are still willing to try. Something like: I don’t have it setup on this laptop but I will try and get it working quickly, but no promises.
Hand written signs ftw
Did you bite the bullet and go and print something the next day?
If it makes you feel any better I’m 99% sure I’d have done the same thing.
Many years ago, my aunt bought an old, terribly specced laptop and couldn’t get Windows to run on it. I installed Ubuntu and everything was fine - she could check her email and browse toxic conspiracy theories on Facebook and all was good with the world.
Two years later when visiting I got my first support request - would I mind showing her how to print something? No problem, but would you mind showing me what you were trying? She was selecting menu items to send to a virtual printer, not the one on the network. I show her the correct printer to send to and the thing prints. Easy. Out of curiosity, I check the outbox queue for the virtual printer. Over a hundred documents, going back two years.
For two years she’d been unable to print, and every single time she’d ever attempted to print something she’d followed the exact same steps that didn’t work, and just accepted that this was the way things were.
SMH.
Its the same way the Vote with the same outcomes of nothing working but keep voting the same anyway, ya never know, next one might work :)
Weirdly enough I’ve found it much easier to print on linux. It just works out of the box.
If it doesn’t it is definetly the printers manufacturer fault 😅
It’s something we can thank Apple for. CUPS is the standard printing system on practically all non-Windows OSes, and Apple hired its developer and did a lot of work on improving it in the 2000s and 2010s.
Me too. I have a Brother printer. When I first set it up, Windows printed everything in inverse black and white until I hunted down the correct driver. Windows also never figured out how to wake it up, so I always had to manually wake it up. And it simply never worked with the scanner.
Linux got everything right without me having to fuss with anything.
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Easier than what, exactly? Windows always works out of the box for shit like printers. If it didn’t, 99% of their user base would be calling it defective.
OSX, on the other hand, is where I’ve had so, so many issues with printers.
Nah, if you haven’t fought windows printer drivers then you’ve just been lucky. Meanwhile you can almost always convince CUPS to spit out a print.
Are you suggesting that Linux has better printer driver support than the system that 99% of that printers users use?
Yes. MacOS uses CUPS too btw.
Odd how this is the opposite of my experience. My mother is unable to print or scan things 2/3 of the time on her HP printer using windows 10. You know, the OS whose parent company has very close relations with HP, and is updated in a manner that forces their users to use the most up-to-date official HP drivers, even going as far as to prevent them from using any other drivers, including the default windows ones.
Meanwhile, my Linux laptop can operate the printer just fine. Never had an issue. I can even operate the loading tray, despite the HP tech support reps telling my mother it is broken.
sudo pacman -Syu --needed cups system-config-printer avahi nss-mdns foomatic-{db,db-{engine, nonfree}}sudo systemctl enable --now cups.socket avahi-daemon.serviceRebooting after helps if it doesn’t find the printer right away.
Half my family just email whatever they want printing to my Dad and he prints it at his workplace.
We’ve owned multiple printers over the years but 8/10 no matter what device you used, The printer just didn’t work. The “Dad strategy” has never failed.
First day at work for junior software engineer, he is super excited and stays late getting familiar with the project.
Finally he gets up to leave and in the hallway he runs into the CEO himself, looking lost, standing with a piece of paper in his hand in front of a shredder.
“Oh, thank God,” says the CEO, “I thought everybody has left. Look, my secretary has gone and I only have two minutes until I have to be back in the conference call. Do you know how to work this thing?”
The junior looks at the shredder, notices it’s not plugged in, connects it, the thing turns on and he shows the CEO how to put in the paper and press the button. They watch the paper as it starts going in with a sigh of relief.
“Thank you so much,” says the CEO, “you’re a life-saver. I only need one copy.”
🤨for what exactly is a printer needed in 2024?
I’ve heard cybersec guys say they print off things like recovery codes and keep the physical copy stored. Also, entire governments still run on pen and paper (shitty inefficient governments).
" And every citizen that’s living in this city Is a digit on the charts we’re climbing Political systems are too inefficient They split like the atom and burned in the fission Now every department and every decision Defer to the herds of our corporate divisions " shitty inefficient governments are probably better than otherwise
I like this quote. Where is it from?
The Stupendium - The Data Stream
Have you also tried using Signal instead of WhatsApp? Sorry, had to do it.
I do use Signal quite a bit. Some important contacts don’t use it and hence, you see my using of WhatsApp.
Printing works out of the box most of the time on Linux. However, if it doesn’t work it really doesn’t work
I’m new to Linux and was struggling to print from LibreOffice the other day because my printer suddenly wasn’t listed.
Hi, yeah, the printer wasn’t plugged into the computer.
see, this is why you linux cultists just cannot sway people, you’re all pushing this insane operating system that can’t even print to a printer that’s powered off in a block of concrete launched to orbit a distant star and be a russel’s teapot to drive any aliens sending probes out mad.
They are working on a pipewire plugin for that
uh huh. i bet you need to open powershull to do that though, dont you? or does linux not even HAVE powershall?
I know you’re joking, but powershell is actually available on linux lmao
satire is dead.
The ONE printer that I have, and arch doesn’t have a driver for it, WHY?!?
because printers are the most proprietary fedjacked snitchware that has ever existed.
open source DIY paper printers need to be a thing.
edit: this seems pretty popular, anybody interested in crowdfunding some mechanical engineering?
@primrosepathspeedrun I tried to convince Pine64 people to do printer next, they politely turned my down since this is almost impossible due all licensing
ps: but probably DIY crowd could ignore this
@lemmy.world @hacktheegg
Artificial, licensing? What kind of licensing could one possibly need to build a machine that deposits ink onto paper? Printers have existed for way more than 20 years so surely all the important patents must have expired.
@grishka @ABasilPlant @AncientGood I made a very little (re)search and found what all main components: #postscript , Printer Command Language ( #PCL ) and a bunch of ISO standards not a subject of licensing. I dunno, maybe this anti #privacy shit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots — should be licensed 🤷♂️
