Hi,

I'm looking for a good professional black-and-white laser printer that plays well with Slackware. Do you have any brands and/or models to recommend?

Cheers,

Niki

My HP LaserJet seems to work. When I first configure it and install the binary blob, it prints, but after a printer shutdown and a reboot, jobs are listed as complete, but do not print. I am guessing there is a difference in printer configuration between Slackware and Debian I do not know about, since it worked perfectly with Debian.

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My HP P2015 laserjet works well with Slackware. It is a small office unit. It does not have an ethernet port or wireless connection; it is USB.

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I have an HP LaserJet 4 Plus that I use and share via CUPS. It works quite well.

I also have a JetDirect network card for it.

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I managed to get a free Dell 3330DN. Turned out to be a rebranded HP 3330 with a duplexer, so using the HP driver, it works fine.

Hey, Niki,

H-P. Ethernet. Fixed-IP. HPLIP.

Done. No kidding. Done.

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For printers, I always use HP. This is simply because they treat Open Source well. For the opposite reason, I will never ever use Canon and Lexmark. I reckon you'll probably burn yourself with Brother too. Anything else will fall between those extremes.

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Yup. My HP works well on all types of Linux(love it; I've had it for years)).

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HP Laserjet 1000 works pretty well with the foo2zjs driver.

My previous printer was a professional quality Brother. It worked like a dream on two Linux systems, but neither was Slackware.

I was happy with my LaserJet P2055dn, before it failed after more than 112,000 pages of fine service. [Either lightning got it, or a "tip" from the toner guy for better envelope printing did it in.] The extra cost of Ethernet more than paid for itself in savings when administering client PCs. The LaserJet 4000/4050 and LaserJet II printers in use before it were just fine as well.

Really, the goal is that the printer accept Postscript (maybe PDF as well), preferably in printer hardware, but it may be okay to accept it in printer software as well. Otherwise, there's too much variance in page quality over the years and operating system changes. It will save some trees to not play the BubbleJet game of sometimes-closed one-vendor printer languages and/or binary nonsense; have things print correctly the first time.

In short, Postscript isn't exclusive to H-P. However, Postscript-capable H-P printers work so well that I haven't searched much outside of H-P. My Canon ImageCLASS copier/printer probably isn't Postscript, and I had to spend some time nudging the driver's source code until it would compile. Printing is fine, though. [Scanning is another matter.]

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Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that: PostScript is pretty much mandatory for the long term. H-P makes both Laser- and Inkjet models with built-in Postscript (and HPLIP does all the set up for you).

My experience agrees with tronayne & mlslk31. Use an HP networked printer with a static IP address.

My setup involves 2 users each with a computer using 2 network connected printers for the best flexibility and reliability. I use B&W laser printers and borrow the use of a client's or friend's computer when I print those 3 color pages once or twice a year. I don't need color in my business.

Like mlsk31 I printed over 90,000 pages before the heating element on the HP P2055DN failed (changed shape slightly) and I replaced it with the HP M401DN. My other HP P2055DN is still going strong but it's only printed 14,000 pages. The HP M401DN has printed 21,000 pages.

Both those printers print duplex which saves me on postage when I mail out 70-page reports. Both printers accept the extra large toner cartridges which is cheaper by ounce than the normal size toner cartridges.

The printers work fine for both Slackware and MS Windows. You didn't ask about MS WIN, but I run MS WIN7 applications in a VM on one of the Slackware computers. Different print drivers are available with MS WIN so the MS WIN applications printer operations can vary some depending upon which MS WIN driver installed.

EDIT: The registration on both these HP printers is not perfect and it usually varies less than 1/16 of an inch but occasionally it's greater than that and I have to re-print a page. I daily print on dense pre-printed legal forms requiring small fonts and it works good enough for those forms. If you use pre-printed forms and have strict registration requirements there may be printers that do a better job.

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I have a Brother 8040D. I haven't tried it out with Slackware yet, but there's no reason to expect a problem.

First of all, thanks everybody for your numerous suggestions.

I think I'll opt for the HP Laserjet, the combo version with an included scanner. I have one follow-up question for this. If I configure the printer to have a static IP, how do I setup the scanner? So far I've only worked with USB scanners. Does the hp-setup utility include setting up the networked scanner component also?

Cheers,

Niki