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this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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iiiiiiitttttttttttt
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you know the computer thing is it plugged in?
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As a tech worker, the only piece of technology I don't have is a printer. Those things suck. I use the library's if I need to print something.
I use the printer at work to print things. Fuck owning a printer lol.
Working remote means if my work had a printer, that would be me owning a printer. I definitely did that before I had this job. Or used the university's printer when I was going to school.
You probably don't even own the printers you buy anymore.
Cheap laser printers have done me good. Toner lasts forever and because of corporate B2B practices, they aren’t locked into the shit ink ecosystem.
Printers are the sole reason I never went into IT.
I've only had to deal with printers once while working in IT. But, I also never worked a help desk.
I work at an MSP and I deal with printers daily. Fucking hate them
I once turned down a six figure job because they asked too many printer related questions
That's wild. But I get it. Printers are the bane of my existence.
The only thing worse than a normal printer is a large format printer
I have to fix gigantic plotter printers like once a month and the amount of paper that gets wasted in the troubleshooting process is insane
I remember troubleshooting plotters for a while, if they were under warranty I would sometimes just ignore that I was certified and just scheduled one of their techs to come out just so I didn't have to deal with it.
I was going to say just print it at work, but then you're probably wfh. I have to be onsite part of the week because of my role, but I'd been using an office supply and shipping store before that.
I grabbed a usb only Brother laser printer at the thrift store. I've never even changed the toner and I've printed hundreds of shipping labels with it. I've never had to mess with configuration with it. I'm more worried about the usb 'B' cable going bad than the printer itself.
Same here, I have a business grade laser printer and it's worked flawlessly on Linux and windows without any extra work to set up. And the laser toner has a much longer shelf life than ink. The downside is it's black and white and still cost more than a consumer grade color printer.
There's this print shop that's insanely close to my house and I go there to do resumes or whatever. If there was a library anywhere near me, I'd be giving them all my business.
I am currently working on a project that requires me to use Brother P-touch printers with NixOS on Raspberry Pi. Manufacturer does not offer ARM64 drivers. Last driver update was from 2017 for the model I am using.
I spent the entire week figuring out why CUPS does not play well with open source drivers which are maintained by some unpaid heroes who are doing their best.
Eventually, I hacked together some code that implements printer's raster language and uses usblp printer class driver.
It saddens me to see that there is little to no interest from manufacturers to provide and, most importantly, maintain working drivers.
I would have been certainly lost without open source alternatives and implementation examples.