I am always reminded of this tweet from ProZD when printers come up:
i've got a billion dollar idea, imagine a computer printer but like, it actually fucking works, it prints every time like it's fucking supposed to without issue, it just does that no fucking problem, companies, feel free to take this idea, this one's on me
My monochrome Brother Laser is around 15 years old. Works great on Linux, as it should on any cups system. It's still the same printer or was 15 years ago, drivers shouldn't change.
I think I'm on the 3rd drum for that thing. Lord knows how many pages. Just keeps trucking.
I have a Brother laser printer. It regularly goes into such a deep sleep that no force on this Earth can wake it up when it's time to print, because it's too deeply unconscious to respond to "wake up" signals from computers. It cannot print without first being brought out of its coma by a troubleshooting software.
So I'm not going to put that in the category of printers that just prints every time like it's supposed to without issue.
Nope, pressing the power button doesn't work, and I've tried it on both wi-fi and ethernet, with the same problem either way. I am pretty much resigned to the fact that I do not get along with printers.
Strange. You could try go to its web UI (just go to the printer's IP in your web browser) and disable both sleep and auto power off, and see if that helps? You can also change those option through the menu on the printer itself.
I don't print a lot (average 1 page a day), so having the printer actively "awake" and consuming electricity all the time is pretty wasteful. So that wouldn't move it into the category of "not evil" for me.
The main issue with a lot of “printers” nowadays is that they’re usually not just printers anymore - it’s a printer/copier/scanner with faxing capabilities. The more complicated shit you cram into a single machine, the more likely something else completely unrelated will break.
I have a HP laser printer that is literally just a printer with the Wi-Fi turned off and it’s been working well on the odd occasion I needed to use it. Only reason I got it was because the Bother printer I wanted wasn’t on sale and this HP was going for under $100, so I went for it since I needed it at the moment and figured I could use it until it either dies or HP decides to not offer the toner anymore, whichever happens first.