Specification for a printer
 

Since my main printer seems to have given up the ghost, I'm thinking of buying a new one. But before I do, I'd like to have some feedback. What I want is:

1) Works well with Linux. That used to mean HP but I'd be interested to know about good experiences with other manufacturers.
2) Basically simple internally for maximum robustness. I'd like it to scan as well as print, but I don't need additional bells and whistles like wireless, fax or internal data storage. My present one (which I found) seems to have a complete OS inside!
3) Suitable for only occasional use as I don't do a lot of printing.
4) Not too expensive (and that goes for cartridges too).

1. Just about anything HP
2. Laserjet, not inkjet. There's almost none that give you ONLY printing + scanning without all the other bells and whistles, however.
3. Laserjet, not inkjet. Toner is already dry so no danger of it drying out.
4. Cheap refills are essentially nonexistant. I got my new-ish HP Color Laserjet CM1415 AIO for $200, which I thought that was a great deal (not the newest model, but not ancient and includes scanner for my wife as she does taxes and often needs to scan things).

I second the recommendation of HPs. HP seems to have the best Linux support. The HPLIP website has a list of supported devices.

I suspect finding a decent printer without wireless these days will be difficult, as everyone seems enamored of it. My low-end HP Officejet 5740 (I don't do much printing any more so I went low-end) has both wireless and ethernet. Plugging in the ethernet automatically disables the wireless, which is just fine with me.

I wish mine had that, I had to go in and disable wireless.

Is your printer an HP? I'm curious to know whether they have learned from their mistakes or whether they have gotten dumber.:)

Yup, mines an HP. 1415fnw

How old is it? Mine's about a year old.

I just recently got a usb to parallel port adapter to keep my old HP printer going. I have an ancient desktop with a parallel port to make it function previously (1GHz single core, 1GB ram). It's a tank, but the color cartridge is like $80-ish. And the black seems a bit hard to find OTS these days. +1 for going laser if it's going to sit a lot and have occassional use. I've had to hot water soak the tips of the ink for this old 722C more than once to get near full cartridges to print again after long periods of inactivity. Not fun, messy, and you waste a fair amount of ink on the first couple prints before it does a good job again. As far as the scanner part, depends on your needs, for a lot of things the camera on your cell phone is good enough for "scanning". About the only need beyond that I use a lexmark with 0% linux support to basically make copies of documents. But I pull the power brick from the back of it when it's not in use since it likes to wake up and make noise a lot.

A laser printer definitely seems the way to go. I know that their cartridges are more expensive than inkjet cartridges, but I've also heard that they last for ages, so that the actual cost per sheet is very low. And according to Timothy, they are ideal for intermittent use. I found this in Wikipedia:

Monochrome would be OK most of the time for me, as I print mostly sheet music and some text. The one situation where it doesn't work is when you have to print out a form that is available online, and the idiots who designed it have included coloured text.

As to lack of "onboard processing", that's just what I want. It was the onboard processing in my HP inkjet which suddenly changed its mind about my cartridges and decided that they were non-compatible. Why does a printer need to have a computer inside it? A printer should just do as it's told!

The main problem is that I would then need a separate scanner. I have an old parallel-port Umax upstairs, wired to Oldboy. I shall have to see if it still works.

Mines a little older than yours, I got it a bit over a year ago, but it's actually a 5 or 6 year old model.

I've no idea how old mine is. I found it outside someone's front gate!

A tradition has developed in Harrow that people leave anything they don't want at the gate and someone takes it away.

Thanks for the comeback. Maybe we can be cautiously optimistic that HP has learned something over the years.

I've always had good luck with Brother printers, they have nice monolaser units that are inexpensive, and you don't get harassed by HP's expired ink nonsense.
https://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-L2.../dp/B00LZS5EEI

Kind of a tradition here too. Although I don't think it has to get as far as the front gate. If it isn't locked or bolted to something, open season.

I've had a look at some of those. The monochrome ones are $90-100, about £60-65 in our money, which I suppose is reasonable (though it's more than I paid for the rest of my system!). But they all seem to require proprietary 32-bit drivers, and that means having a multilib system. I could have that in Debian and probably in Crux, if I rebuild my kernel, but certainly not in LFS (unless I create a 32-bit CLFS).

What did you do about drivers?