My faithful Brother laser printer just poo’d itself. And since I’ve not purchased a new printer with additional features since I switched to full-time Linux, I thought I’d better ask around to make sure the document scanning, copy, fax (maybe once a year if that), and other features will work correctly.
The printer I have no worked without issue with Pop!_OS. Very straight forward plug in play other than a weird quirk with scaling when printing from Firefox built-in PDF handler vs the Document Viewer that ships with Pop.
Does anyone have any advice on potential pitfalls to avoid? I’d like to stick with brother because they seem to be the least evil of the printer corps, but I’m open to other suggestions.
I’d recommend two devices that do one thing well (separate printer and scanner) compared to one device that does both things kinda okay. It also means you can upgrade just one of them instead of having to replace both.
A standalone scanner only really makes sense if you scan a lot of documents. Otherwise an all in one will so just fine.
If you don’t scan a lot of documents you can also take pics with your phone and run them through a cleanup & straighten app (aka “scanner” apps).
On most phones the end result will look fairly poor AND it will be a pain in the ass.
