My partner and I are thinking about getting a Brother laser printer for home use in the near future. How difficult is it to get a newer model working in a Linux ecosystem? Are there any specific drivers we should look into installing, if a specific driver isn’t available for the model we end up getting? Any advice for connecting it to our network?
EDIT: Thank you all for the feedback! It seems that generally you all have had decent experiences with Brother on Linux, depending on the distro, and that there are resources out there to help with any issues that might come up.
My brother works great, but check here for whatever model you looking at
Brother laser printers are great. As long as you get one that supports Postscript (Brother calls this BR-Script), PCL5 or PCL6. You can see this under the “emulations” printing specs on a printer model page. PostScript and PCL both have fully open source implementations so you’ll usually be able to just use built-in CUPS gutenprint or foomatic drivers. I also recommend ethernet (wired or wireless) and not usb.
Do not get one that only says “GDI” emulations which is Windows based and can be really painful to deal with.
I got the HL-L2325DW last year. Connecting it to the WiFi using WPS was really easy. Making the desktop see it was a bit of trial and error, but it was partially thanks to the PDF viewer I was using, so I’d recommend printing from a well established viewer like Okular or the web browser, at least for the first use.
I don’t remember having to download any drivers manually from their website btw, I just chose it from the list when setting up a new printer. This process might change with the distro and desktop environment though, I’m using Kubuntu.
In fact, if you’re a bit lucky, the printer might even show up as a “discovered device” after you connect it to your network, even with a suggested driver and connection so you just need to press next.
Kubuntu is great for out of the box printer detection, as are Fedora and Mint, in my experience.
Some distros may force you through some obstacles though, and in my experience (opensuse) you may have to allow mdns/ipp protocols in your firewall rules for local device discovery and communication.
Apart from that I’d argue that setting up a modern printer on Linux is pretty much plug n play nowadays, since most should support driverless printing at this point.
Worked out of the box for me! The scanner works OK with a seperate utility.
While the Linux integration wasn’t a huge deal for me I just wanted to add one point: Be aware of the fine dust situation laser printer create and why some people are having issues. For home use a inkjet is sometimes preferrable if one can’t position it right (as we often can’t at home)
Sadly at least in the last test I read Brother was one of the worst offenders together with HP.
(I still have one but keep it in my office away from the living areas)
Printing with my black and white Brother laser printer “just works”. 100%. Ubuntu 20 and 22 automatically found it on my home wifi, prints to it from multiple apps. No sweat.
I’m thinking about getting a Brother printer sometime myself, glad to hear that they are super good on Linux!
Was easy as hell for me, just followed the instructions that came with it and downloaded the drivers through brother’s site. Needed the br_scan_skey one too for scanning from the button (but stopped doing that as scanning from the PC just works better, you can change the filetype, “aspect ratio” [not right word but ykwim], and resolution from the pc using something like gnome’s Document Scanner, not so from the button.)
I’d look at the specific model before you pull the trigger and go ahead and make sure it has thr drivers on brother’s site, for mine (and I imagine most) they have .RPM and .DEB.
I have a Brother HL-L2380DW that has been going strong for years. I love it. I can’t remember, but I think Linux Mint just picked it up no problem, and added it to the printers. In the past, I do remember installing drivers from Brother, but I’ve recently done some clean installs and I want to say I didn’t have to do all that. My memory is foggy, though.
I don’t know about the newest models, but I’ve had a pretty good experience with Brother printers, CUPS works fine, and they do release their own driver if you really want to use that.
Even older Brothers bought used or refurbished are any excellent buy. They’re workhorses. Anybody concerned could just buy an Asurion warranty to go along with it.
I have a 20 year old B&W Brother laser and a 2 year old color Brother laser… both just work automatically in Linux without needing any setup, configuration, or drivers.
On another note, Brother laser printers are a really good buy. I have a used one that won’t die and still on its original fuser assembly. Something like this from Amazon should work gangbusters. Just get an Asurion warranty just in case but Brothers are workhorses. And indeed the MFC-L2690DW does work with Linux.
As an outlier in skimming the other comments. Mine wasn’t great.
I replaced it a few years ago, so I’m working from incomplete memory here, but here’s what I recall. I had a Brother laser printer. I don’t recall the model. The drivers were binary, only available for x86/x86_64, and only packaged in deb and rpm. Which certainly covers most cases, but it’s still limiting.
I saw in another comment some only support GDI. I bet that was the case for me.
I think a good takeaway from this isn’t to not buy Brother, but to check support for the model you’re looking at beforehand.
I have an mfc 8900 that works flawlessly on Gentoo, it didn’t take too much futzing around to get both printing and scanning to work.
I don’t believe it’s all that difficult. Best idea is to check either brother’s website or the brlaser project on github. Here is something for you to read over.
My black and white printer works without having to install any drivers. Scanning over the network requires a proprietary Brother driver.
My color printer requires a proprietary Brother driver to use it.If the printer supports IPP Everywhere or AirPrint, it should print without needing any drivers.
This. If the printer supports IPP Everywhere, you should be good to go.
You also might check Brother’s web site to see if they have Linux drivers for the printer you’re looking at. Installing the drivers is a bit of a hassle, but once installed, they work great. But IPP Everywhere is easy and also works well.
