this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2024
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I have years of IT experience, offer Linux support, and am visibly the kind of guy you just know can fix your computer problem (or, if I take my glasses off, I look like I sell weed apparently), and when asked to help with printers I have one answer:
They're sentient and they hate you. I was trained in IT, not exorcisms. Send it as a PDF, PNG, or smoke signal before you try troubleshooting.
Like, I broke my big office one the other day so bad the tech had to come out. What had I done to brick it so badly? Tap a menu option, tap back, then tap a different menu option. If you don't wait 3s between the second and third tap it errors and freezes and they have to send a tech out to do some sort of 2 hour long ritual where he rubs it and whispers how sorry he is.
What the fuck is wrong with printers
Fun fact: the entire Free Software movement exists because Richard Stallman got pissed off at Xerox one day, for not giving him the source code so he could fix his printer.
And we still don't have open source printers
People have attached pens to 3d printers and used them to write letters, effectively print. Most consumer 3D printers are useing or based on open source software.
I think the issue is, printers are relatively cheap to buy and replace. So building your own and programming it hasn’t been necessary. Where as 3d printing was completely in accessible before the reprap movement. 3D printing software is open source as it is motivated by people wanting to build their own machines that could build machines. Something you couldn’t easily buy.