[colug-432] Any suggestions for cross-platform heterogeneous print sharing ?

[Rick Hornsby]

Sent from my iPad

> On Oct 1, 2020, at 15:07, Damien Calloway <damiencalloway at fastmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello all !
> 
> I find myself in an interesting predicament - I have Macs, a Windows 
> device, two FreeBSD laptops, and some Linux devices that I would like to 
> use to share my one printer - a Canon Pixma 3520.

Off the top of my head, the Pi+CUPS sounds like a good direction. I’m using a very old airport express to hook up my HP printer via USB. I don’t see any reason why a Pi wouldn’t work. I have a couple of extra Pis sitting around, and a triple boot Mac/Windows/Linux workstation I might try it on.

As far as printers themselves go, HP makes (made?) shitty PCs, but I don’t hesitate to recommend their higher end printers. Many moons ago, I got sick of paying for ink - cartridges would dry out long before the ink was used. Go to use the printer and it just doesn’t work. I bought a $400(?) HP color laser and despite several long distance moves it’s still running like a champ today. As old as it is, if it broke tomorrow, I’d be fine replacing it with the same model. A full set of 4 CMYK toner cartridges last I checked would be around $400. However, the cartridges never expire or dry out, and last quite a long time.

It has Ethernet built in, which works fine. Putting a print server in front of it and using USB made more sense when I set it up this last time? Don’t remember why I did it that way.

Laser printers are a good long term investment, but it depends on what you’re doing. Laser won’t match an inkjet for photographs - but when I need those I’ll send them out to a photography print house like MpixPro (now Miller’s). Printing lots of color could get expensive. I generally set it up for grayscale default.

In terms of compatibility, lasers like my HP tend to do really well at being postscript printers - that is, they can handle lots of different situations using generic PS or PCL drivers. Way too many ink jets and cheap printers require very specific (Windows only - grrrr) drivers. When the printer mfg moves to next year’s models - good luck. Or as the mfg like to say: on sale now! buy a new printer!

I don’t know anything about the Pixma 3520. I shoot Nikon, but like them Canon makes _excellent_ professional cameras, lenses etc - but I don’t know their printers. For the most part in the consumer printer space, it seems like you get what you pay for.

Austin McConnell on printer ink - https://youtu.be/AHX6tHdQGiQ

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