this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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Brother printers are pretty miserable. I'm on bazzite and no joke, there is a solid 10 minute delay from when I hit the print button to when it prints. It used to scan, then stopped one day with not explanation. Ive use the same printer on the same version/release of fedora on my laptop and it works fine now but it didn't when it worked on my bazzite desktop. The driver/CUPS thing shows up nothing sometimes, and sometimes finds the printer after 400 attempts even if I search by mac address, ip address, hostname, doesn't matter. The little gremlins in the machine decide when I can print or scan.
You've had this experience with multiple Brother printers, or is this anecdotal?
My anecdotal experience is that my Brother printer works just fine, after installing the driver of course. Delay until printing is in seconds. 🤷♂️ It's a WiFi printer, too.
Don't even need a driver with modern IPP supported printers, they just work. At least with basic printing needs, but probably some gaps for complex stuff.
Yeah, my particular one needs a driver unfortunately, but it's fairly old I think.
@victorz @Know_not_Scotty_does "Just install the driver", so you must have a windows with it, too, only to use your own printer...
Yeah I went through the whole process to download the linux drivers and generate the package as outlined on the Brother website. I could never get it functioning properly that way. The generic driver that the bazzite/fedora print manager used occasionally works but again, it does weird stuff sometimes.
@Know_not_Scotty_does If the manufacturer gave linux drivers, they are probably inserted into your linux distribution. So you do not need to install anything.
My specific printer wasn't listed in the default print manager but it also didn't make a difference when I tried to manually add it via the brother website. Its an old and shitty printer, I need to just replace it.
I don't have Windows, no. The drivers are packed in the AUR. If you install the driver on your Android phone you can also print from your phone. Android it's also Linux-based. 😁
On the contrary, I've had exactly opposite experience. Had to use "connection repair tool" every time before printing on windows. On Linux I had to learn what to install at first to make my printer work, but once I did I have never had any problem occur.