[HLUG] Brother printer / scanner

[Julian Robbins]

Hi

I recently got a nice but older Brother colour laserjet printer and scanner
from trash nothing which had problems with paper feeding.

I managed to sort the paper feed issues after cleaning the pinch rollers
and pickups.

What I was struck by however was the quality and support for Linux for this
printer

Full PostScript compability, and all drivers as either debs or rpm
packages. Scanning over the network also works  nicely too. There were a
couple of minor gotchas but a 5 minute Google fixed these.

What is nice is the added ability to press Scan and save on the printer or
OCR etc and the files are saved on my Linux desktop in a brother folder on
my pc.

Years ago getting printers and scanners working was hit and miss and some
with no Linux compability whatsoever.

So in some ways this is a non post but in a good way.

Annoyingly there is still not an easy way to upgrade the firmware using
Linux. This is only available via Windows or Mac.

I always believed HP and Epson had the best compatibility but I've been
very impressed by Brother.

Julian