From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Chris Marusich Subject: Re: Does your printer work with Guix System? Please share! Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2019 20:41:41 -0700 Message-ID: <87mul1rwne.fsf@gmail.com> References: <87va0aupm4.fsf@gmail.com> <20190323140921.559ea24a@riseup.net> <87ef6wf4nt.fsf@gmail.com> <87v9zzeesj.fsf@gmail.com> <87pnpyg8ta.fsf@elephly.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature" Return-path: Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([209.51.188.92]:49708) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hDLJG-0000mP-Kj for help-guix@gnu.org; Sun, 07 Apr 2019 23:51:04 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hDLAM-0008H3-P0 for help-guix@gnu.org; Sun, 07 Apr 2019 23:41:52 -0400 Received: from mail-pf1-x443.google.com ([2607:f8b0:4864:20::443]:43067) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.0:RSA_AES_128_CBC_SHA1:16) (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1hDLAM-0008GM-ER for help-guix@gnu.org; Sun, 07 Apr 2019 23:41:50 -0400 Received: by mail-pf1-x443.google.com with SMTP id c8so6751671pfd.10 for ; Sun, 07 Apr 2019 20:41:49 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <87pnpyg8ta.fsf@elephly.net> (Ricardo Wurmus's message of "Sat, 06 Apr 2019 22:47:29 +0200") List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-guix-bounces+gcggh-help-guix=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Sender: "Help-Guix" To: Ricardo Wurmus Cc: help-guix@gnu.org --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi all, Ricardo Wurmus writes: > Oh, that sounds painful. It's sooo painful! I read a good article while looking for printers: https://thewirecutter.com/blog/why-all-printers-suck-even-the-best-ones/ This statement really resonated with me: "Like most things in life that you have no control over, you'll be happier if you accept printers for the janky money pits that they really are." I'm inclined to agree. It seems like all "consumer-grade" printers are designed to fail or become obsolete only a few years after you purchase them [1]. I couldn't justify spending any significant money on the printers in the stores I visited, knowing that even if I spent $500 on a "nice" printer, it would still be terrible, and it would still fail in only a few years. So I bought a cheaper one. I avoided HP because I know they use DRM to enforce the use of their own ink cartridges. I favored Brother because I've heard fewer bad things about Brother regarding GNU/Linux support, and it seemed like you've had some success with that brand in the past. In the end, I got a Brother HL-L2390DW, and it works. Kind of. I tried a few models and brands in the store using both PureOS (a FDSG-compliant derivative of Debian) and Guix System. I must have tried 15 or 20 different "all in one" printers, and they all had scanners, but I couldn't get a single scanner to work at all, on either distribution. However, I was able to print well enough using PureOS on the following printers: * Epson ET-7700 * Brother HL-L2320D * Brother HL-L2390DW. This is the one I got. I decided not to try the ET-7700 with Guix System because I decided I rarely need to print in color (I'll go to a print shop for that), it was more than I preferred to pay, and its scanner function didn't work even on PureOS. I decided to focus on Brother models because they were relatively inexpensive laser printers. My understanding is that laser printers tend to last longer than inkjet printers, and it's more likely that you can replace the toner with inexpensive third-party toner. I expect the printer to fail in 3-5 years, and after that I'll find another. That's not great for the environment, but unfortunately I've found no "consumer-grade" printers with a longer expected lifetime. At least it's better than the 2-3 years I'd probably get with an inkjet printer. I decided to get the Brother HL-L2390DW instead of the HL-L2320D because it was only $20 more, and it came with a scanner. The main difference between the two is the wireless connectivity (that's the "W" in the name) and the scanner. The scanner doesn't work with PureOS or Guix System, but I couldn't find any scanner that did work, anyway. I'm hoping that maybe someday I can figure out how to use the scanner with some FSDG-compliant system, hopefully even Guix System. A side project to work on some day... I tried using the HL-L2390DW in a variety of different configurations in both PureOS and Guix System. In short, IPP (over the network, not USB) delivered the best results. In the CUPS web UI (https://localhost:631), in the Administration tab, when you click on "Add Printer", the HL-L2390DW shows up under "Discovered Network Printers". The CUPS web UI automatically fills in the connection details and selects "IPP Everywhere (tm)" as the model, so you can basically just stick with the defaults when you add the printer. When finished, you may want to set various default options, and you may want to set the printer as the system default. In my case, I configured the printer to use duplex mode (i.e., double-side printing) and to print in US Letter format. You can do all of this using the CUPS web UI. This was relatively easy to do in both PureOS and Guix System. I tried printing various documents using various programs. I tried printing the default CUPS test document from the web UI, a PDF from Evince, and the same PDF using the "lp" command line tool. These test documents include text and pictures. When using IPP (i.e., the printer added as described above), PureOS always printed correctly. However, even when using IPP, on Guix System there were problems. When I printed the CUPS test document from the CUPS web UI, the printer printed the same document on two sides of one piece of paper, and one more time on a second sheet of paper. I expected it to print on both sides of only one sheet of paper, which is what it did when I tried the same thing on PureOS. In addition, the pictures did not print - only the text and the border of the CUPS test document were printed correctly. The same thing happened when I tried to print out my PDF file from Guix System: the print-out was missing some pictures, but all other text was printed correctly. This is good, since it means it's a problem with Guix System, not the printer. It isn't possible to fix the printer, but it is possible to fix Guix System. For now, I'm going to print from PureOS until I can figure out what's wrong on Guix System. I discovered another problem with brlaser that was not specific to Guix System. When I added the printer over USB using the brlaser driver (for the HL-L2300D series), I observed similar results as with IPP: PureOS printed pictures and text, while Guix System only printed text. However, there were more problems. In both PureOS and Guix System, the bottom border of the CUPS test page was clipped off, as if the brlaser driver had incorrectly shifted the vertical position of the document by a few millimeters, or as if it had simply forgotten to draw the very bottom of the page. And mysteriously, when I tried to print my test PDF, it consistently failed to print, causing the printer to display "Out of memory" on its LCD panel. Perhaps this is an indication that brlaser was incorrectly sending tons of data to the printer. This "Out of memory" problem did not occur with all PDFs, but I was able to trigger it with a few different PDFs, so it must be a bug that is somehow related to the structure of those PDF files. A mystery to be solved upstream... I tried a lot of other configurations: AppSocket, LPD, and so forth. IPP delivered better results in every case. For some reason, PureOS was able to discover more network print servers (e.g., for LPD) than Guix System, which discovered only the IPP server. And finally, judging by the output of "avahi-browse -avr", it seems that the Brother HL-L2390DW does not advertise an IPPS server, so it probably doesn't support TLS, which is unfortunate. CUPS supports IPPS, so if I could use the printer with the brlaser driver over USB, I could make the printer securely available in my network via CUPS. However, since the brlaser driver doesn't work so well for me on both PureOS and Guix System, this option isn't very practical for me at the moment. None of the other printers I tested were any better, even on PureOS. And some of them cost $300, $400, $500... I'm satisfied with my inexpensive, terrible Brother HL-L2390DW, but only barely. My one remaining hope is that when this little gremlin gives up the ghost in 3-5 years, there will be better options available. Thanks for reading so far. Hopefully someone out there will find this information useful. Should I open a bug report for the IPP problem in which Guix System doesn't print pictures, even though it prints text? Footnotes:=20 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence =2D-=20 Chris --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQIzBAEBCAAdFiEEy/WXVcvn5+/vGD+x3UCaFdgiRp0FAlyqwvUACgkQ3UCaFdgi Rp26LhAAk+zbsW8efb1njoyLZZs9QOFoMx/b/SGTEVuQsQl/uiJt/BS95QEybXjW JaAABlylqjfYqSp21NZVl1JtdOcz3WpqZjLlQoJhBCbiQ9qaMiLYMjlHu1N/68Py uogrXrd50pHdtVS3nMGaDguh2uiF5HuYw5JbdZ1FM3YT8wxyPWKGfhTZlYYD6GMT UISiH3x3VwAsQHpyeB2GVIICRuKqaT0TPDhy096iF//6pbwr3Hgxalpo4H96NBXi i9WHwsuzndPpoeHFb2gp/C7ejY2BvO4/mVrt73GhEZdumeImfAp4c92qXjq7PxOf SOyOk0Zm2Y5SCAmzdrxNHgiMUXqKNYmW9bcbFzkV4oHybIutZ8ln5VOysGQ5pjZf A98QRrc6wWiIHrqL8jlrJfMQ2Ft4VEndD0KmDhapmGpw7moAVZf1NksuIcS5FWP7 kqjx4mkqvkKQs/xsQ7AViBybSHkGhwIlfeKrRFg6JWYZL9hlCHPIxCtcQ1FfzVcG K8ZDPJSA1Is7N33S9LOMsY4egKYzIE39LCnQQhz+wnnwqXX82QCp6709bI9udfM0 eF8C53HpZziGfaQuBCxFwKvXGkMIkAsiW/16P55ToYrwUGhMG7oCYxR6nLCaKmXj OZwMXYRifS9IrPogzqH8nVJ1DUdhzg8K7DjLV/UekxutEW8/+08= =ffBs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--