What’s the best printer solution now? The only one I’ve used in openSUSE is HP. I have a Photosmart 7510 that on and off refuses to print landscape. It worked for a long time then quit. (I did ask in this forum and didn’t get a good answer.) I found a workaround by having two different drivers. I had one setup using hpijs that printed landscape and everything else from my openSUSE apps. I setup another one using hpcups that printed everything from inside browsers (Chrome) just fine.
That worked fine until this week. First the hpcups one quit printing landscape and now nothing will print landscape from anywhere. The printer setting haven’t changed and redoing them didn’t help.
I am using 13.1 and update everything it tells me to update. It looks very much like updates are breaking and fixing this. They could be driver updates or Chrome updates or both. It’s maddening though. Enough so that I’m ready to switch printers.
This HP is the only printer I’ve used in openSUSE, but I have used Epson and Canon in Linux Mint in years gone by. Epson needed TurboPrint to make it print right. Canon worked OK, but the printers themselves kept dying.
Does anyone know of a photo quality inkjet printer/driver combination that works and works reliably?
I wouldn’t blame the hardware here. It is likely to be due an application-specific issue. (For example, I use KDE applications and can print landscape or portrait as desired.) I would pursue this a little further by testing other application behaviour. Which DE are you using BTW? It may be that a bug report is required.
> Avoid Canon, no Linux drivers, a few 3rd party ($) drivers (e.g.TurboPrint)
+1 if you can help it. Canon does provide drivers, but that’s the full extent
of its Linux support. If the driver for your printer is flawed, as is the one
for mine, you’re SOOL, AFAICT. Next printer I will get will probably be a
Brother, to get its included Epson PCL support for my DOS apps, which I
forgot to look for last time printer shopping.
HP made good stuff in the '80s & early '90s, but that stopped a long time ago.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!
I think deano_ferrari may have hit on it. I did some more googling and the problem seems to Google Chrome. It’s flaky when talking to local printer drivers. It appears to have been this way for years and the quality is variable. i.e. Different upgrades will regularly fix and break parts of it. That’s exactly what I’ve been seeing. Things like landscape will work great for months and then stop completely. Sometimes it will work from the desktop, but not the Chromebook. Sometimes it talks to CUPS fine and not HPLIP or the other way around. I thought it was the drivers, but it appears to be Chrome itself. I should have noticed the changes because Chrome updates way more frequently than the drivers.
I do have Firefox and tested it. It seems to print fine. However, I’m pretty heavily into Google tools and Chrome works better for those. I haven’t tried it, but wonder if Chromium talks to printer drivers better.
I do appreciate the advice on Brother. I’ll keep that in mind for the future. I certainly agree on the Canon advice. I would throw Epson in with Canon as having hard to find Linux drivers that don’t work very well. I’ve used Canon and Epson with Linux (Mint) in the past and HAD to use TurboPrint. With all the good HP reviews, I thought I wouldn’t need TurboPrint. However, since writing this, I’m downloaded it again and it works perfectly with Chrome. So, that looks to be the best solution for me.
BTW, I’m using KDE. That’s the biggest reason I dropped Mint and move to openSUSE. LM had pretty much dropped KDE support. That’s why Solydk split off, but it isn’t as stable as oS yet.
>
> Thanks everyone for the great replies.
>
> I think deano_ferrari may have hit on it. I did some more googling
and
> the problem seems to Google Chrome. It’s flaky when talking to local
> printer drivers. It appears to have been this way for years and the
> quality is variable. i.e. Different upgrades will regularly fix and
> break parts of it. That’s exactly what I’ve been seeing. Things like
> landscape will work great for months and then stop completely.
> Sometimes it will work from the desktop, but not the Chromebook.
> Sometimes it talks to CUPS fine and not HPLIP or the other way
around.
> I thought it was the drivers, but it appears to be Chrome itself. I
> should have noticed the changes because Chrome updates way more
> frequently than the drivers.
>
> I do have Firefox and tested it. It seems to print fine. However,
I’m
> pretty heavily into Google tools and Chrome works better for those.
I
> haven’t tried it, but wonder if Chromium talks to printer drivers
> better.
>
> I do appreciate the advice on Brother. I’ll keep that in mind for
the
> future. I certainly agree on the Canon advice. I would throw Epson
in
> with Canon as having hard to find Linux drivers that don’t work very
> well. I’ve used Canon and Epson with Linux (Mint) in the past and
HAD
> to use TurboPrint. With all the good HP reviews, I thought I
wouldn’t
> need TurboPrint. However, since writing this, I’m downloaded it
again
> and it works perfectly with Chrome. So, that looks to be the best
> solution for me.
>
> BTW, I’m using KDE. That’s the biggest reason I dropped Mint and
move
> to openSUSE. LM had pretty much dropped KDE support. That’s why
Solydk
> split off, but it isn’t as stable as oS yet.
>
> Thanks,
> Clyde
>
I run my Brothers print on Chromium, Konqueror, Firefox and SeaMonkey
with no problems. My config. below.