Re: Does your printer work with Guix System? Please share!

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Hi Chris,

> I want to buy a printer to use with a Guix System machine.  At a bare
> minimum, it just needs to print in black and white reliably, but I hope
> I can find one that does more than just the bare minimum.
>
> Has anyone here successfully printed (and/or scanned) using Guix
> System?

Yes!

I haven’t tried it recently but I had used my laser printer Brother
HL-L2370DN successfully.

I’m using this package definition:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
(define-public brlaser
  (let ((commit "7ed0d6f2e8d5a8192c5621898b3ff920c95b66dc")
        (revision "1"))
    (package
      (name "brlaser")
      (version (git-version "0" revision commit))
      (source (origin
                (method git-fetch)
                (uri (git-reference
                      (url "https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser.git")
                      (commit commit)))
                (sha256
                 (base32
                  "04spxjk42wah1j38w6iv4c2pasmpbh2gypv3xlmk7vh3yzfffpxf"))))
      (build-system cmake-build-system)
      (arguments
       `(#:configure-flags
         (list (string-append "-DCUPS_DATA_DIR="
                              (assoc-ref %outputs "out")
                              "/share/cups")
               (string-append "-DCUPS_SERVER_BIN="
                              (assoc-ref %outputs "out")
                              "/lib/cups"))))
      (inputs
       `(("ghostscript" ,ghostscript)
         ("cups" ,cups)
         ("zlib" ,zlib)))
      (home-page "TODO")
      (synopsis "TODO")
      (description "TODO")
      (license license:gpl2+))))
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

I use this with the following CUPS service declaration:

          (service cups-service-type
                   (cups-configuration
                    (web-interface? #t)
                    (extensions
                     (list cups-filters brlaser))))

It’s just a monochrome printer (no scanner) and I verified that this one
feature works properly.  It prints the test pages and prints PDFs
(generated with LuaLaTeX from gbrief2 documents) just fin.

The toner cartriges can be refilled by a third party service for a few
times before they need to be replaced, but I haven’t printed enough to
have a need to refill.

I haven’t used it in a while, but I wanted to give it a try again soon.
(I bought it to print PCB masks onto transparencies to use them as photo
resist masks for etching PCBs, but I haven’t found enough time to
actually etch a little.)

The printer is pretty small for a laser printer and has no fancy
features (has an ethernet port, but no WiFi, no fancy display), which I
appreciate.

--
Ricardo