Arch Linux

jlindgren

Member

Registered: 2011-02-27

Posts: 260

Printers that work with Arch

Make/model: Brother HL-L2370DW (or HLL2370DW)

tl;dr: Printer works great (including double-sided) with the generic PCL driver but has some setup caveats.

I recently purchased it as a cheap laser printer ($130 refurbished) that had good reviews. Unfortunately, it was hard to find details of how well- or ill-supported it is under Linux. Neither https://www.openprinting.org/printers nor https://www.pwg.org/printers/ list it. There are some anecdotal reports that it works or partially works. For the price, I took a chance and bought it anyway. I'm sharing my experience here in case anyone else is shopping for a cheap laser printing and considering this one.

The printer supports Wi-Fi and that's how I set it up. You pick the SSID from a list and then enter the password on the one-line LCD display, with up & down buttons to select each character. It's tedious but works. Once connected, the printer set its own hostname via DHCP and could be accessed by that hostname -- no need to use an IP address.

I wanted to set the printer up "driverless" if possible. The printer should in theory support AirPrint/IPP Everywhere (ipptool sees it). But the CUPS web interface (localhost:631) doesn't seem to want to set it up using IPP. At least, if you select the "Discovered Network Printer" option, it uses the older LPD protocol (lpd://<hostname>/BINARY_P1 to be exact). Brother lists the printer as supporting "PCL6 (PCL XL Class 3.0)" so when CUPS asked which driver to use, I selected "Generic PCL Laser Printer". It works fine. There is no need to install gutenprint, any of the foomatic-* packages, nor any AUR re-package of Brother's proprietary driver.

Maybe the downside of the generic driver is that it doesn't pick the best default options. I strongly suggest changing two of these (via the "Set Default Options" page):
- Resolution was 300dpi by default. Change it to 600dpi to noticeably improve the print quality. (At 300dpi, gray areas have a very noticeable coarse dot pattern.)
- Under "Options Installed", "Duplexer" must be manually set to "Installed" for double-sided printing. After changing this setting, you can set the "2-Sided Printing" option under "General" (or the drop-down in the GTK print dialog) like normal.

Last edited by jlindgren (2023-08-31 13:26:01)

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: Printers that work with Arch

How about killing the specific model in the title, put it in the post and have a thread like the "Laptops that work with Arch" thread?

jlindgren

Member

Registered: 2011-02-27

Posts: 260

Re: Printers that work with Arch

Done. Have one you want to add to get things rolling?

walkingstickfan

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2021-05-10

Posts: 116

Re: Printers that work with Arch

HP Laserjet Pro MFP mdl #M225DW

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Arch Linux with Openbox & Tint2

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,688

Re: Printers that work with Arch

HP Envy 5640, an A-I-O printer/scanner.

Network:
  Scanner: works
    Packages: sane, sane-airscan
  Printer: works
    Packages: cups, hplip

USB: Not tested.

Roken

Member

From: South Wales, UK

Registered: 2012-01-16

Posts: 1,354

Re: Printers that work with Arch

HP OfficeJet 8000, but I use with a license paid Turboprint. Buit works a treat./

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Ryzen 5900X 12 core/24 thread - RTX 3090 FE 24 Gb, Asus B550-F Gaming MB, 128Gb Corsair DDR4, Fractal Design Define 7 XL, 5 HD (2 NvME PCI, 4SSD) + 1 x optical.
Linux user #545703

/ is the root of all problems.

tethys

Member

Registered: 2019-08-13

Posts: 175

Re: Printers that work with Arch

Brother DCP-J562DW, help here.