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One man's effort to sue HP Inc for preventing his printers from working and forcing him to use its own branded, and more expensive, ink cartridges can move forward in California.
Florida man John Parziale was furious when he discovered in April last year that HP had automatically updated his two printers so they would no longer accept ink cartridges from third-party vendors – cartridges he had already bought and installed.
That month, HP emitted a remote firmware update, without alerting users, that changed the communication protocol between a printer's chipset and the electronics in its inkjet cartridges so that only HP-branded kit was accepted. The result was that Parziale's printer would no longer work with his third-party ink. He saw a series of error messages that said he needed to replace empty cartridges and that there was a "cartridge problem."
Parziale sued the IT titan in its home state of California, arguing he would never have bought the HP printers if he knew they would only work with HP-branded ink cartridges. At the time, the cartridges he bought to go with the machine did in fact work and were printing merrily right up to the point the DRM-style update was sent.
[...] But feeling ripped off and beating a tech giant in court are two different things, as Parziale found out this month [PDF] when federal district judge Edward Davila threw out most of his claims against HP. Four of five allegations he had made were under America's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), accusing HP of abusing its "authorized access" to his devices. These were rejected because, the judge noted, he had granted HP remote access to his printer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:54AM (22 children)
Haven't bought your crap since you stopped making good products, around the time Bill and David moved out of the garage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:07PM (21 children)
The last HP inkjet I owned died after a few months with officially approved HP ink dripping out of the machine.
Been using an Epson and cheap knock-off ink ever since.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:12PM (8 children)
Cheap-ish Sumsung Laser printer owner here. No more dried up ink when the printer is needed. That alone is worth the switch to laser printer.
Yeah - I know - no colours but that's not an issue for me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:42PM (5 children)
> Cheap-ish Sumsung Laser printer owner here.
Hello! Model number, please? Does it require proprietary drivers in order to function in Linux?
(Score: 3, Informative) by KritonK on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:33PM (1 child)
Former Samsung laser printer owner here. Yes, you do need to download custom drivers, which, apart from the PPDs contain a few executables (x86 and x86_64 only). What's more, you need to download them from HP, who now own Samsung's printer division.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:08PM
+1 Ouch
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @02:00AM
I have a HP OfficeJet 2620. The drivers and software come pre-installed with Ubuntu.
The scanning Just Works.
I don't use it to print. I go to Officeworks for that. Never put the print cartridges in.
I only wanted a scanner that works in Linux to scan letters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @02:35AM (1 child)
I have the Samsung ML-1860
openprinting says Black & White printer, this is a Paperweight
But installing using the Samsung CLP-310 Foomatic/foo2qpdl ppd it works, haven't tested all options. The 16xx seem more supported. They are old models though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 02 2020, @12:18PM
You should update the info.
I too have one that says it should be crap. A PIXMA MP640, but it works fine... now if only I could remember how I set it up in the first place..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @06:48PM
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/01/hp-completes-purchase-samsung-printer-business.html [cnbc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @05:52PM
Brother has some very nice color capable laser printers, I think they need drivers for cups, but work with lpr, netcat, etc. out of the box.
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:36PM (7 children)
I'm pretty happy with a Brother color laser printer. It was about $350. The stock cartridges are good for a few thousand pages.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:52PM (6 children)
And I'm very happy with a ~90€ Kyocera color laser Printer. It's built like a tank, has good print quality and all sorts of features that one would expect to find only in more expensive office printers, such as a network interface and double-sided printing.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:13PM (5 children)
Model #? I've been impressed with the office-grade Kyocera's at work, but the only thing a quick search turns up in that price range is jumbo toner cartridges.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @01:38AM
I decided to look, only thing I found was on Amazon, in the $400 to $500 price range - https://www.amazon.com/kyocera-color-laser-printer/s?k=kyocera+color+laser+printer [amazon.com]
Amazon must get a kickback from Brother, because you have to scroll past a small boatload of Brother printers to peruse the Kyocera. Maybe GP will post back with a model number for his less expensive Kyocera.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @01:45AM (1 child)
Oh - I missed this first time - https://www.amazon.com/Kyocera-1102RW2US0-Monochrome-Stackless-Capability/dp/B01MXS42BL/ref=sr_1_5?dchild=1&keywords=kyocera+color+laser+printer&qid=1588296811&sr=8-5 [amazon.com]
Kyocera 1102RW2US0 ECOSYS P2235dw Monochrome Network Laser Printer, 37 ppm B&W, 600 x 600 DPI Up To Fine 1200 DPI, Standard Stackless Duplex, Wireless and Wi-Fi Direct Capability, 256 MB Memory
That's a little more than the 90 Euros cited above, but still an affordable printer for occasional home use. 90 dollar toner cartridges seem a bit expensive, but that still beats some of the other rent-seeking offerings from other companies.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:12PM
Nice find - I had checked Amazon as well (boatloads of Brother's included), and hadn't spotted anye. I stopped looking long before I reached $200 though. Not a bad price all in all, but a bit high for someone like myself who only occasioanally prints something, and is rarely more than 24 hours away from having a much nicer office printer a few dozen steps away. $100 would have been tempting.
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Friday May 01 2020, @10:51AM (1 child)
Kyocera ECOSYS P5021cdn
The place I got it in Greece now lists it at 99€, while other on-line stores list it in the 159€-250€ range. I guess it pays to do one's research before ordering!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:14PM
Thanks. And yes, research certainly helps. Unless you're far enough away from the nearest $100 option that shipping will mostly kill the deal anyway. :-/
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:53PM
Second-hand office-grade Kyocera. Great printer, still actively supported despite its age and when I chuck in a random budget toner cartridge it reports "Genuine cartridge installed" and starts printing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Unixnut on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:22PM (2 children)
> Been using an Epson and cheap knock-off ink ever since.
Be careful. I bought an Epson after many HPs precisely because of HPs ink DRM. I print a lot, so I have CISS installed on my Epson. Thing is, a few weeks ago a pop up appeared on my PC telling me a new printer firmware update was available and do I want to install it. I researched online, and found that the update breaks all non Epson ink cartridges, and prevents the use of CISS systems.
So I clicked "no", however I can imagine in future they will upgrade the firmware silently. I suspect the only reason they are not doing so now is precisely because they want to see how the lawsuit pans out. If HP win, then its open season on screwing us out of our ability to use third party ink.
If they ever lock me out of third party cartridges, it will be the last Epson I ever own.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @02:16AM (1 child)
How does one block a printer from connecting to open internet access and downloading drivers?
Can it really be said I 'agreed' to it doing this when it never asked?
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:33PM
Don't give it open internet access - that's probably a good idea anyway since the security on printers is very often... lacking. The easiest way is probably to configure your firewall to disallow any communication between your printer and the internet. Most people don't have any need to print remotely, so nothing is lost unless it's one of those cloud-based printers that *requires* internet access to function. Don't buy those. (Seriously. Who thought it was a good idea to consume limited internet bandwidth sending every possibly-confidential print job across the internet and back again?)
Of course, in my experience firmware updates are usually done using the user's computer as an intermediary - sometimes integrated into the driver, or more likely some aspect of the bundled software (there's often a management console or the like). In which case you *might* have an option within their software to disable updates, or at least automatic ones. Of course that will work no better than they want it to. As a final defense, assuming you have a software firewall with per-program restrictions, you could simply refuse internet access to any printer-related software. Though you may lose some occasionally-useful functionality in the process.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:09PM (10 children)
A good lawyer would need to sort this out, but it looks like the judge gave them an opening to fix this problem.
"As HP points out, however, the Support Page, which is
incorporated into the FAC, contains a number of reasons for the firmware updates that are
allegedly beneficial to consumers and to competition. See Support Page, Dkt. No. 26-1 (the
“process for authenticating cartridges” is to “protect the quality of [the] customer experience,
maintain the integrity of [HP’s] printing systems, and protect [HP’s] intellectual property.”).
Plaintiff raises no allegations to refute these alleged benefits, or to show that they are outweighed
by the injury he suffered. "
It seems misleading that a/the major reason is missing from the reasons for the authentication of cartridges.
That is to monetize their IP.
Additionally, it seems arguable that preventing third party cartridges actually does the reverse of what they say are trying to accomplish.
For this knowledgable customer, it certainly didn't enhance the customer experience. (He went from working and happy to dead in the water.)
There is theoretical risk to HP's reputation from a bad cartridge printing poorly, but s/w that warns the consumer would help HP's reputation there more than this mod did.
Not sure how it protects and Intellectual property other than monetizing.
If this area of the claim could be ammended as the judge asks and discovery done, it seems worth publishing HP's logic behind this particular mod.
Maybe a go fund me with the constraint of publishing to accomplish this?
I'm not sure if it would be good for consumer protection to go this way, but did HP also have a duty to help, instead of hurt it's customer?
It's one thing to sell a product that doesn't work because of a design flaw and have words in the warranty to slip out of responsibility.
It's another thing to go out of your way to make the product work in a manner with is the reverse of the primary stated purpose of the product.
HP sold a printer, not a revenue collection device.
If they had advertized it as a revenue device and it worked that way from the beginning, them it might be a different story.
Again,published discovery would be interesting here.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:43PM (3 children)
Surely, the fact that he is taking them to court is in itself an allegation that the alleged benefits are outweighed
by the injury he suffered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:15PM
My read is that the judge agrees with you, and suggests how to put the allegation in the correct form to be heard.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:20PM
I hear you and I wish that was the case, but there is a thing called "frivolous lawsuit". Not everyone is fully rational. Or, they may be caught up in whatever the issue is, and not fully understand the other side's case. (which is why we have courts and judges). You would hope a lawyer would advise them, but lawyers want to make $, so they'll pretty much go along with anything that someone pays them for.
If lawyers were only allowed to charge minimum wage plus collect a percentage of winnings (contingency), we'd have a much cleaner legal system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @09:56PM
In court and Federal Courts in particular, you have to be explicit. In cases like this, you can only win in court if you have damages. Therefore, you have to tell the court you have damages. Same with the CFAA, he says they weren't authorized to access the machines. So he loses, despite it being obvious that what he probably meant was that HP exceeded the authorization he gave them with such a change to his system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:14PM (5 children)
Why should God have to pay for it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:37PM (4 children)
What does God need with a printer?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:10PM
What does God need with a printer?
Probably nothing, but maybe a less helpful spell checker?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:19PM
A church office might use a printer. Name it: Prints Of Peace
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 01 2020, @02:10AM
After editing away the mistakes he made with this world, he would like to make a few more, without all the work? What does anyone want with a printer? And, LASER printer! He can mount them on sharks!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @10:58AM
He was the original 3D printer pioneer.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:11PM (21 children)
It's so confusing. I want a mono laser printer for Linux, but when I look around all I find are companies which provide their proprietary bullshit deb or rpm, rather than Linux just detecting it and having it work. People say, "Use Brother!" or "Use Canon!" No, I won't trust their fuckin files. It should be detected and simple to use, without blobs.
Now I find out HP is *cough* allegedly *cough* fucking us with ink shit? How many companies have been sued for this behavior, hasn't HP already been sued for this?
So what do I fuckin buy? I don't want an inkjet, I don't want an "all-in-one" scanner, fax, bidet, whatever...
The mafia like grip on brand name ink is such bullshit. I've heard about people buying shitty inkjets, using them, then just buying another one because it's the same or cheaper than the fuckin ink refills.
I'm surprised these companies aren't requiring fresh animal blood. It would probably be cheaper.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by epitaxial on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:38PM (8 children)
Sounds like you want a 30 year old HP laserjet.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:46PM (3 children)
Whatever gets the job done!
I mean, fuck it, if I can't find anything which works without blobs, I may as well just buy an ancient dot matrix printer.
To add to the insult, every fucking printer has to be WIRELESS. What if I don't want wireless?
Dot matrix, how I've missed you.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:05PM
You going back to a 60mA current loop for an interface?
(Score: 2) by TheReaperD on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:25PM (1 child)
There used to be a company that refurbished HP LaserJet 4050Ns and would replace all the wheels and cogs with brass replacements. The resulting refurbished unit was far better than when it was sold new and would only need a set of belts every 10-20 years (depending un usage). They'd even repair the PCBs if something happened (rare). But, I went to look them up for this post and I could no longer find them. It looks like they are no longer around. Sad.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday May 01 2020, @02:18AM
We recently finally let our workhorse 4050N go this year because it broke down and the replacement parts simply weren't available anymore.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:52PM
It will go with OP's perceived age. His "Get off my lawn"-style printer rap is classic!
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:15PM
LaserJet Pro M402dne serves me well.
Todays' LaserJet Pro M404dn seems not any different besides a different (a bit pricier) cartridge.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday April 30 2020, @09:37PM
Confirmed. It's only a little over 20 years old, but an HP Laserjet 4000 w/ Jetdirect gives you a networked attached printer in 1997. I've never been worried about the inkjet mafia, because I had access to laser printers from the beginning. Except for the dot matrix stuff with the punch holes and built-in carbon copies. I do kind of miss those.
Other than some large format inkjet printers, and photo printers, that same printer has been with me now for over 20 years. Had it serviced exactly once to fix something that got bent, but otherwise has printed millions of pages.
Never had a problem yet printing to a network attached printer from Linux. HP's software supports the communication protocol really well, and it's 20 years old. So the generic network printing drivers have always worked for me.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by toddestan on Saturday May 02 2020, @04:42AM
About 20 years ago I bought a used Laserjet 4P. I'll probably never need to buy another printer again. I don't actually use it that much, but very recently used it to print out my state's tax return (I mail it in due to a lack of free electronic filing options). Still works great.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Fishscene on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:22PM (3 children)
Actually, I just installed Ubuntu 20.04 and it automatically installed my wireless HP printer - I didn't even ask it to. This is neat, but due to this article, I'll be reconsidering ever buying anything HP again. Who knows? Maybe their computer lineup will only allow HP-branded USB drives in the future.
In other words, HP, stop pulling this crap - it's hurting your image on ALL your product lines.
I know I am not God, because every time I pray to Him, it's because I'm not perfect and thankful for what He's done.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheReaperD on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:41PM
Some more history about HP for you. Decades ago, they did a survey as to why they were losing printer sales and who their chief competitor was. The result came back that HP was HP's main competitor and the reason they were losing printer sales was because the old ones were still working well. So, atter a board meeting with many lawyers and engineers, HP decided on a new official strategy: "planned obsolescence." They would make products designed to fail within an expected timeframe. In addition, they would change from making their primary profits from the printers to the consumable components. All was well with this strategy until ink/toner refills came about. First, they tried to sue to copycats but, as they weren't using their patents or products for the ink/toner refills, no IP violation took place. The only area HP might have had a case was covered in the "compatibility" exemption in patent and copyright law. So, HP lost the case on all counts. Thus, the war between printer/ink/toner manufacturers and refillers began. This is just the newest round.
Ad eundum quo nemo ante iit
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:53PM (1 child)
I too just installed Ubuntu (really, Lubuntu) 20.04, and it found my network printer (a Dell E525W all-in-one color laserjet), and ... would not work with it. Keeps giving me this "cups-pki-expired" error message. Lubuntu 18.04 works just fine with that printer.
I am afraid to update the firmware on that printer, in case they too are trying to sneak in DRM. It does have a problem easily worked around. Seems after a few weeks of use, it gets into some strange state and refuses to print. I blamed Windows at first, because that's where the difficulty started. Was still printing fine from Lubuntu 18.04. I reinstalled drivers in Windows, and that didn't help. Then a few hours later it stopped printing from Linux. Power cycle it, and it's fine again. Argh. All that time I wasted fooling with Windows drivers, and the problem was the printer all along. Perhaps the update would fix that problem. But now that I know what to do to work around it, I'd rather live with the problem than risk having all my 3rd party cartridges instantly rendered unusable.
Really, I'd rather not have a printer at all. Age of Information, Paperless Office, hello? But damn it, sometimes the fastest way to fill in a form is print the stupid thing out, fill it in by hand with a pen or pencil, and scan it, because electronic document handling still sucks. Lot of PDF forms weren't made fillable. Even if they were fillable, PDF is still a poor format. It wasn't meant for editing. But businesses get really weird about letting customers have the source document, be that Open Document Format, LaTeX, or even (ugh) MS Word. Afraid a competitor might "steal" it, as if they couldn't recreate it from a PDF. Also afraid to admit that's what their real issue is, preferring to fob customers off with excuses that don't hold any water. True, there are compatibility concerns, especially with MS Word's doc format. Hit them with the suggestion that if they believe that's a big deal, then they ought to switch to LibreOffice, and they'll squirm and find another excuse.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:55PM
Oh, I meant to mention a big prob with 20.04. LibreOffice Export to PDF does NOT work. They even say so in the release notes. Ouch. There's a workaround, but I think they ought to have delayed releasing 20,04. Major problem for office work.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:23PM (1 child)
I don't have a Canon so I can't address that, but my Brother works just fine as a plain ps printer.
If you won't trust a vendor-supplied .PPD file, how exactly do you expect this to work? How in the world should your OS know about the capabilities of a printer made after the OS was released, if not by vendor-supplied information?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:59PM
My Brother colour laser printer works fine, and understands a variety of well-known printer protocols,a s well as understanding Postscript.
I do have the ppd from Brother installed on my old laptop. It was quite a effort to get it to work *without* installing that massive inscrutable blob of printer handling stuff everybody uses called CUPS, but instead using the simple lpr commands that have been around for ages. It turns out there are several different Debian packages that install different lpr commands, and it matters which one you have! But browsers and word processors can't figure out how to use lpr, so I ask them to print to pdf and do the lpr myself.
But on my new laptop the default Devuan install did install CUPS, and I didn't have the energy to go and figure out the whole mess all over again. Now the browsers and word-processors know about my printer. But they think the printer doesn't have two-sided printing. The official straightforward old-fashioned method I used on my old laptop does do two-sided flawlessly.
And yes, on occasion I've hand-written my own Postscript files.
The one problem I have with the drivers provided by Brother is that instead of providing a driver, they provide a binary installer for the driver. I would have been happy with just the ppd file and instructions where to put it. That would have been enough.
-- hendrik
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:52PM
At home, I have a Brother laser printer, admittedly an older model, hooked up to my Linux Mint distro. It was automagically setup when I plugged in the USB cord. Maybe there's a binary blob involved -- I don't know.
At work I'd been using Brother stuff for ages which all worked great until recently I decided to replace an aging printer with an HP laser printer because it seemed like a good deal. I didn't do my research well enough and learned too late that even taking the chip out of my OEM toner cart and putting it into an aftermarket cart doesn't work well -- once I did that swap, it wouldn't print from the envelope feeder. I was so pissed.
Anyway, for the internet record and people googling, if you randomly find this comment, HP sucks, is a slimeball organization even with their Laser printers, and if you buy one of their printers, you will regret it. Buy absolutely anything else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:09PM
How about a printer that supports Postscript direct printing? The original "lower-cost" example was the first Apple Laserwriter and I strongly suspect that any printer with a built in PostScript interpreter can be installed as a Laserwriter (or something newer).
My first laser printer was an NEC Silentwriter with PostScript interpreter and I installed it (MS-DOS) as a Laserwriter. Worked great with my DOS wordprocessor that could print to .PS
Side note, those old .PS files are now viewable directly in SumatraPDF.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:27PM (2 children)
In fact, fresh animal blood would be cheaper. You can probably get that for free.
Per unit volume, inkjet ink is more expensive than fine wine.
Currently, I'm using a years old Samsung CLP-320 color laser printer with no binary blobs. So of course HP bought out Samsung's printers so they could kill off the more open competition. I guess if/when it fails, I just won't do any more printing. The current options are actually worse than nothing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @03:09AM (1 child)
> Per unit volume, inkjet ink is more expensive than fine wine.
And if you live in a low-tax state (or near an Indian reservation), gasoline is currently cheaper than bottled water.
Think about that -- oil comes from deep, expensive wells and goes through countless refining steps. Bottled water might go through a filter before it goes into a bottle and is trucked to the store (using diesel fuel).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 02 2020, @03:30AM
There's a great case of a broken market. It's why I own a water filter and reuse water bottles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @06:33PM
brother supposedly has some driverless printers out. i don't have model numbers. i think there is a video about the current state of printing in linux from the 2019 linux plumbers conf that talks about this issue.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:12PM (10 children)
Brother printers. Brother goes to the effiort of providing perfectly working drivers for Linux, MacOS, & Windows.
My best ever printer is Brother DCP-9015CDW colour laser printer.
Well done, Brother!
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:41PM (8 children)
Are the drivers open source?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:47PM (5 children)
How's the toe-jam today, Mr Stallman?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:53PM
I'll take that as a no?
BTW, I'm sure my own toe jam would taste better than most woman's private parts. And it wouldn't give me throat cancer, either.
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:57PM (3 children)
That pretty much answers my question, thanks.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Unixnut on Thursday April 30 2020, @05:35PM (2 children)
When I look to buy a new Linux printer, I find a few printers I am considering, then I go to https://openprinting.org/, [openprinting.org] and check the status of the print drivers. It tells you if you need binary blobs, third party PPD files (usually with download link), or whether it "just works" with the CUPS bundled PPD files. It will also tell me how well it is supported on Linux, from "Works perfectly" to "Paperweight".
The site has been helping me pick printers for years, and indeed even when I spec out printers that only will be used on Windows, I still pick from the "Works perfectly" pile, to support the sale of those printers and manufacturers, and to make the printer more usable in future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @07:00PM
There's also this libre Brother driver:
https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser [github.com]
(Score: 2) by SemperOSS on Friday May 01 2020, @11:30AM
The link provided gave me a 404-error and I found the current page is this one [github.io]
I don't need a signature to draw attention to myself.
Maybe I should add a sarcasm warning now and again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:01PM
OP here. I have not checked whether there is a corresponding source package available, but after installation of the driver package there appears to be a mix of shell scripts, binary firmware blobs, and about 3 executables.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hoeferbe on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:11PM
I see that at least one snide detractor has already jumped up to belittle your question. He/she just does not get it.
I own a Brother MFC device. Although I commend Brother on their work in supporting the GNU/Linux community, I have to say my experience would likely be dozens of times better if their work was open source.
Brother's LPR driver is a 32-bit RPM. So the 32-bit glibc tries to get pulled in as a dependency. To get around this, Brother actually instructs one to use the "--nodeps" option [brother.com] to get around this!
Ultimately, I discovered that I had to use Brother's Driver Install Tool script to install the official driver RPM files (and not try to install them, directly). This is because those RPMs were not created with SELinux in mind. Thus, one needs the script to set the SELinux contexts after installation.
Brother's online instructions refer to Fedora 10, which reached its end of life over 10 years ago!
If these Brother drivers were open sourced and released to the community, I strongly suspect the above hacks would be done away and the user experience would be vastly improved. But until that happens, we are beholden to Brother's good graces for support. (Again, I don't want to take away the kudos that Brother deserves; their support of GNU/Linux is far better than Epson or HP. But they also have a ways to go before that can be the best that they can be.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:06PM
OP here. Printers break; badly engineered printers break more quickly. It is my feeling that the world's best engineering quality is found in Japanese made products. I love that Brother printers, more than any other make, are still largely made in Japan. The engineering quality, the attention to detail, etc are outstanding
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:15PM (2 children)
Floridaman fights for our rights! DRM-free ink cartridges! The right to stalk newly reopened beaches as a the Grim Reaper! The right to build home-made airplanes and crash them in Missouri!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:24PM (1 child)
At beaches you can practice social distancing by using binoculars.
Every performance optimization is a grate wait lifted from my shoulders.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @06:39PM
I'm lazy. I use methane expulsions.
(Score: 2) by r1348 on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:52PM (3 children)
So, I'm on the market for a new printer, HP used to be the best choice for linux but I won't deal with this shit. I'm looking for suggestions since the market is flooded with printers and the user reviews aren't very consistent.
Here are my requirements, if any of you can kindly make any suggestion:
- it must be an inkjet (laserjet can be considered, but I must print color and don't have a whole room for it) all-in-one with wifi support
- it must have open source linux drivers (not necessarily from the manufacturer, but with good quality)
- the scanner must work over the network
- it must have separate color cartridges, refillable ink tanks are a plus
- it must not enforce any DRM, of any type
My previous printer was a HP Photosmart b109n, worked fine with 3rd party inks and served me well for almost 10 years. Unfortunately one of the plastic supports of a belt pulley gave up and it's pretty much unfixable. I'm basically looking for a drop-in replacement.
Thanks!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:49PM
I'm using HP OfficeJet 8710 - it has separate ink cartridges (3 color and one black), works with the libre hplip drivers on GNU/Linux without blobs (double sided printing and scanning using flatbed and feeder work although feeder tends to cause paper jams when I tested so I don't use it often), has a removable printhead (I didn't remove it yet and simply run a script that prints a test page every few days so I don't need to clean the printhead if I don't print frequently enough) and at least the black cartridges can be refilled (I didn't refill mine yet but I purchased the ink). I only use USB connectivity and haven't tested network connectivity (if I remember correctly HP runs their own wireless network by default which I disabled).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @01:58PM
There are small color laser printers, but AFAIK, they don't have scanner/all-in-one of functionality.
If you care about software freedom, one important thing to remember is that the printer's own OS is all proprietary. Can you trust it on your network?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:32PM
My old Samsung "laser" printer (more likely LED) does color and isn't any larger than an inkjet printer. It's been a while since printing in color with toner required a behemoth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:15PM (4 children)
I'm confused how Florida Man sued in his home state of California...
Do I misunderstand his super powers?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:15PM
The same way New York man keeps his taxes in his home state of Florida, of course!
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Thursday April 30 2020, @08:08PM (2 children)
I'll try to diagram that sentence for you to help make it clear:
Parziale | sued | titan
.... | ..\ .. \the \IT
.... . .. \(in) state
.... .. .. .. .. \ ..\ .\(of) California
.... .. .. .. .. .\ ..\
.... .. .. .. .. . \its\home
...
That should clear it up!
(Blank spaces weren't lining up properly, so I added periods. They are to be ignored.)
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday May 01 2020, @01:25AM
Or:
Parziale sued the IT titan in the IT titan's home state of California
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday May 01 2020, @04:38PM
I think something important was lost when English classes stopped teaching sentence diagramming.
If you've never been taught how to systematically parse a sentence, how are you supposed to understand what's being said when your intuition inevitably breaks down?
(Score: 2, Funny) by leon_the_cat on Thursday April 30 2020, @02:43PM (2 children)
but i bought my gallows from HP and the blade is blunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @04:39PM
Is it an HP blade or is it aftermarket?
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday April 30 2020, @10:18PM
I see HP managed to upsell you a blade...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallows [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:46PM
I just got the Epson ET-2750 Eco-tank yesterday, bought it so my college kid can have my old printer (an Epson Artisan 730). No cartridges, just fill the tanks with bottled ink, which appears to be reasonably priced for the Epson branded ink. It comes with 2 years (YMMV of course) worth of ink for printing. I'll be setting it up Saturday (giving any viruses time to fade before handling the box a lot).
The old 730 was happy with using off-brand remanufactured cartridges (which are a LOT cheaper than the Epson branded ones).
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @11:11PM (1 child)
What happens if you reach into your gateway and put the printer in Internet timeout?
(Set so packets with the printer's mac address cannot go thru the Nat to the Internet.).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 01 2020, @02:27AM
What if your printer is plugged into your computer and its software uses the computer to send packets to the network?
Do we need a HOSTS blocklist or a iptables rule to block it?
(Score: 2) by boltronics on Friday May 01 2020, @03:02AM
First thing I did when I purchased a network-attached printer quite some years ago (and still use to this day, a HP actually...) is have my ISC DHCP server give it a static IP address, and have my LAN iptables firewall block all access to the Internet from that IP.
For many years now, I fully expect any firmware "upgrade" HP would provide for its printers would actually be a downgrade. I don't even use unofficial cartridges (I print like one page a month on average) but it would probably want to make my ink cartridges expire after a set date (like my Braun electric shaver does for cleaning kits...) or show advertisements on the LCD or something.
It's GNU/Linux dammit!