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 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.