Printer Information LinuxPrinting.org

Printer Suggestions

(http://www.linuxprinting.org/suggested.html)

Monochrome Lasers

As with inkjets, many vendors do not offer much support for the use of free software with their printers. Fortunately, many lasers work anyway, since many are sold to businesses and therefore need to offer some degree of compatibility with a wider range of software.

Many vendors have product lines that are well engineered and very compatible with free software. Brother and Lexmark both have built their own Postscript interpreter codebase and thus tend to produce lower cost and higher quality printer firmware than many competitors. Both companies have also shown a willingness to assist free software developers. Brother provided documentation to Ghostscript driver authors for several of its low end, non-PCL/Postscript lasers. Lexmark's Optra division wins the gold star; nearly every printer has extensive technical documentation available from its web page, not to mention a complete GNU/Linux software package for a number of popular distributions.

Low Cost
HP is the king of the laser printer market, although their domination is not really built on low cost devices. Already their cheapest lasers, the LaserJet 1010/1012/1015 understand PCL and work with free software. The incompatibility in the PCL of these printers which often let them crash ("Unsuppported Personality: PCL" problem) was worked around in a simple hack on the "pxlmono" GhostScript driver ("pxl1010") and short time later in HP's HPIJS driver.

The cheap LaserJet 1000/1005/1020 principally work with free software, too, but they need their firmware uploaded from the computer everytime when they are turned on. This makes their setup much more complicated.

The other models understand standard PCL or PostScript and therefore work with usual GhostScript drivers or HP's PPD files, for example the entry level of PostScript printers currently is the LaserJet 1320.

HP makes the PPD files for their PostScript printers available as free software. You get them here on linuxprinting.org.

Note that HP's consumables are combined drum and toner units, which make running an HP laser somewhat more expensive.

Mid-range
Mid-range lasers are typically sold for use by "workgroups". From about $700 on the low end to about $3000 on the high end you have a complete spectrum of 1200dpi devices with ever more speed and paper tray capacity. Almost all devices in this market speak fully documented strains of PCL, PJL, and PostScript; thus almost all of them work quite well with free software. HP is the biggest player here.

The main thing you need to use a printer in this class effectively is a good "PPD" printer description file. Most vendors will include this file somewhere in the drivers they ship; often you can also find it on the vendor website. HP has released their PPDs under free licenses and therefore they are also available here on linuxprinting.org and also in some distributions. CUPS and PPR support PostScript printers with PPD files natively, Foomatic gives full support for these printers with any spooler or even without spooler.

High-End Printers
For high printing volumes of bigger departments and special demands (as stapling, folding, envelope-packing, binding, ...) there are high-end black-and-white and color laser printers which do more than 30 pages per minute, have capacity for more than 2000 sheets and special finishing units. These printers usually have a built-in PostScript interpreter and so they work all "Perfectly" when one uses the PPD file coming with the distribution, from the manufacturer's web site, or from here on linuxprinting.org. The PPD files can be directly used with CUPS or PPR as spooler or with Foomatic and any other spooler. With these environments you can access all the options (all which you also get offered under proprietary operating systems) of your printer by a graphical interface (e. g. kprinter, XPP or GPR).

Many of these printers are multifunction devices which also copy and scan. Not all of these integrated scanners are supported, but some are perfectly supported because they are operated via a web interface, FTP, or e-mail, and so they are independent of the operating system. You should check this when buying a high-end multifunction device.

Color Lasers

The time of color laser printers being only available as expensive high-end enterprise-level devices is over. There are already many devices well under $1000.

Note that most low-end color lasers have proprietary protocols, which are not (Epson AcuLaser 900/1000, works with proprietary Epson driver PIPS) or not perfectly (Minolta/QMS magicolor 2200DL) working with free software. But there is also one model for which the manufacturer supplies an excellent free driver, the Minolta/QMS magicolor 2430DL. The driver works also as well on the 2300DL and can be downloaded from Minolta/QMS' FTP site.

Other manufacturers offer PostScript also in the cheap range, as for example HP with the Color LaserJet 2550L.

Workgroup and high-end color laser printers usually understand PostScript and so they can easily be set up with the manufacturer-supplied PPD file.

Color Inkjets

There are two brands worth considering for use with free software:

Epson
The Epson Stylus line, as driven by the Gimp-Print driver, is a good choice for color inkjets. The driver provides excellent quality and extensive tunability both of the quality/speed tradeoff and color rendition. The new 5.x generation of this driver, now named Gutenprint to stress the case that it is not only for the GIMP, is shortly before its first stable release and it is available at the same place as Gimp-Print. The new driver is much more optimized, supports advanced color models as the CMYKRB (with red and blue ink) of the Epson Stylus Photo R800 and R1800 printers, supports 16 bit per color, and has many more user-adjustable options (which can be set to default/automatic for getting quick results). Epson also provides drivers, the Photo Image Print System (PIPS), but these drivers are not totally free (they contain a binary-only module).

Epson has several series of Styli: a Color series, sporting a four color CMYK process; the newer C series, most of which sport pigment based fade-proof inks; and a Photo series, sporting a six color CMYKcm process. The free driver produces output of very good quality on all three types. For a bit more detail, see this forum posting by the Gimp-Print project leader.

Note that some older Epson models have a problem with fading cyan dye (aka "orange shift") in high ozone environments; for more information on this see Epson's website.

Hewlett-Packard
Most of the HP inkjet line is supported using a driver provided by HP. Most newer HP models produce very good photo and text output. Duplex printing on paper sizes up to A3 are also supported. The main limitation of the driver is that you do not have any adjustments to fine-tune the output, but the colour reproduction is already very good out-of-the-box; certainly for most consumer and business use it is quite suitable.

HP's HPLIP/HPIJS drivers are provided under a free license; like the Gimp-Print driver for Epsons, it is included in many modern Linux distributions. With the HPLIP low-level driver and the HP Toolbox many advanced functions of HP's printers get accessible, as ink/toner level monitoring, nozzle cleaning, and real full-bleed printing on all paper sizes and without necessity of a tear-off tab on the lower edge. HPLIP also supports the extra functionality of multi-function devices, as scanning and memory card reading, so it replaces the former HPOJ completely.

Other Brands
There are few good free software drivers for Canon and Lexmark inkjets. Do not buy one and expect success. Often you have either a printer not working at all, fight with incompatibilities of the few manufacturer-supplied proprietary drivers, or you have to calculate in extra costs for third-party proprietary drivers like Turboprint.

Inkjet Recommendations

Low cost: Please note that we strongly suggest skipping the "low cost" bracket entirely in favour of one of the "good" options. These cheap printers are generally slow, flimsy, and expensive to operate.

Good
Epson's best inkjet for general Linux use is Epson's Stylus C8x series. This is a fast CMYK printer capable of quite good photo output as well as exceptional text and plain paper output. It uses pigment inks and is not subject to the fading dye problems of previous Epson models.

Several of HP's DeskJets are also good choices: 5740, 6540, or 6840.

For a six-color photo-oriented device, try the Stylus Photo R200/R300, and for best results the CMYKRB (with red and blue ink) Stylus Photo R800 (A4/Letter)/R1800 (A3). Note that you need at least Gutenprint 5.x for the CMYKRB models. Gutenprint also supports direct CD printing on the Epsons.

Or have a look at HP's Photosmart 7xxx, or 8xxx models. They support up to A3-sized border-less (with HPLIP) printing, up to 8 inks (CMYcmKkk, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, light cyan, light magenta, blacK, light black, extra light black), access to memory cards, direct printing from memory cards (DPOF) and USB cameras (PictBridge) and sometimes even duplex. Alternatively, some of the regular DeskJets support an optional photo cartridge for six color printing; the results should be the same (at least as the 6-ink mode of the PhotoSmarts) as many modern HP's have in principle the same printing engine but with different extra features (photo card reader, scanner, duplex, ...) around it.

Multifunction
Multifunctions are generally a combination of scanner and printer, sometimes with a fax modem; they work as a copier, printer, fax machine, and scanner.

For a working multifunction device, consider the Epson Stylus CX (4-ink) and RX (6-ink photo) series which simply work as separate USB printers and scanners (Gimp-Print/Gutenprint or PIPS plus SANE backend "epson" or Epson's (not completely free) IScan, kernel 2.4.21 or newer needed); or one of the HP OfficeJet or PSC devices supported by HPLIP (or the older HPOJ if your distro does not have HPLIP yet) such as the PSC 2xxx series with flatbed scanner, the PhotoSmart 26xx/27xx series with flatbed scanner and card reader/PictBridge, or the OfficeJet 6xxx/7xxx/9xxx series with fax, scanner with automatic document feeder (ADF) or combined flatbed/ADF scanner.

The free software support for other brands is very bad, for several devices you get only the printing part working, as it is compatible to a print-only-device for which a driver is available. The built-in scanner works only in very rare cases, as for example for the Lexmark X70 and X73. Some manufacturers offer proprietary drivers which also cover scanning, like Brother.

Big
Most of the wide format Epson Styli, including the Stylus Photo R1800 (the 13x19 format version of the R800, need Gutenprint 5.x), and the Stylus Colors 1520 and 3000 (both 17x22 CMYK printers) are supported well.

Most of Epson's large format printers are supported by the current releases of the Gimp-Print driver. The Epson Stylus Pro 7000, 7500, and 7600 (A1, 24 inches wide) work well; Till tested these himself. Their A0/36-inch equivalents should work as well. The other models are also supported by Gimp-Print/Gutenprint but perhaps need some tuning. We need to hear from people with access to these printers for tesing.

HP's current inkjet printers up to A3 size are all supported by HPLIP/HPIJS, examples are the DeskJet 9800 (6-ink photo) and the Business Inkjet 2600 and 2800 series (4-ink, 4 separately changeable cartridges).

HP's DesignJets are not well supported by free software. A few are reputed to work, but we have too few reports to recommend them. Probably here it is better to look for models with built-in PostScript interpreter.

HP PhotoSmart 7350: Works Perfectly

(http://linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=HP)

HP PhotoSmart 7350 Listing

(http://linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-PhotoSmart_7350)

HP PhotoSmart 7350
Color inkjet printer, max. 4800x1200 dpi, works Perfectly

Recommended driver: hpijs (Home page, view PPD, download PPD)
Generic instructions for: CUPS, LPD, LPRng, PPR, PDQ, no spooler

Notes
It has ports on the side for inserting SmartMedia, CompactFlash, SD, and Memory Stick digital "film" and has an LCD panel that lets you select pictures from the "film" to print, so one can use the device as a digital photo lab without PC.

For basic printing functionality use the HPIJS driver. For advanced functionality such as printer status, maintenance features, and photo card unload use the HPLIP driver (which includes HPIJS).

It has a USB port on its front side to directly connect a digital camera (HP only).

Border-less (full bleed) printing on paper sizes up to Oufuku-Hagaki is supported with the "hpijs" driver.

Best output quality reachable with the "hpijs" driver (printer compatible to HP DeskJet 990C), especially the 1200-dpi high resolution mode gives excellent photo quality.

When used with HP's "hpijs" driver, this printer auto-detects the paper type and ink cartridge type and does appropriate dithering and colour adjustment internally, controlled by the hardware. So even when GhostScript with the "hpijs" driver only renders the image with 300 or 600 dpi, the higher resolutions are used for the internal dithering. So if you insert photo paper, the printer will print in photo quality, no paper type choice in the driver's options is needed. There is also a special high resolution mode where the image is rendered in 1200 dpi and interpolated to 4800x1200 dpi by the hardware, without paper detection, intended for photo paper only.

This printer supports an optional duplex unit (probably supported by the "hpijs", "cdj970", and "pcl3" drivers).

Miscellaneous
Printer does not support PJL.
Printer supports direct text printing with the `us-ascii' charset.
Refill: Refill: 1 black or photo, 1 color cartridge
Known autodetection signatures: Parallel Port or USB

Drivers
Recommended: hpijs (Home page, view PPD, download PPD)
General driver notes: This driver is the first free driver issued by HP for their DeskJet and LaserJet printers. Since version 1.0.1 HP has put it under a BSD-like license without the restriction that it is only allowed to use the driver with HP printers, as it was the case for HPIJS 1.0 and earlier. So this driver is really free software now.

Since version 1.0 the driver uses the new IJS interface to plug in drivers into GhostScript without needing to recompile GhostScript, the driver is provided by an extra executable invoked by GhostScript which gets the raster data from GhostScript via shared memory, which is much faster than piping bitmap output into the standard input of the driver, in addition GhostScript can ask the driver for the capabilities of the printer/driver pair.

The quality of colour printing is much higher than the quality of the other drivers.

The quality on photo papers (in photo mode) is very high, especially for the newer models (beginning from the HP DeskJet 990C) which auto-detect the paper type by a hardware facility and so automatically switch between the normal colour mode and the photo mode. On the HP DeskJet 990C and newer there is also a 1200 dpi high resolution mode available, in which the image is interpolated to 2400x1200 dpi or even 4800x1200 dpi by the hardware, and so it gives excellent photo quality. In the new models 6- and 7-ink printing is also fully automatically handled by the hardware, so it works under free software with this driver and the user does not to switch a driver option according to the cartridges he is using. This driver is the only free one which supports more than 600 dpi on HP inkjet printers.

This driver supports also monochrome (PCL 5) and color (PCL 5c) laser printers with resolutions up to 600 dpi. Most laser printers with 1200 dpi understand usually PCL 6 or PostScript, so use the "pxlmono", "pxlcolor", "lj5gray", or "Postscript" drivers then. For Brother laser printers use the "hl1240"/"hl1250" drivers. Note that Epson's AcuLaser color printer series only emulates the monochrome PCL 5, not PCL 5c. So you have to use Epson's "alc..." drivers to print in color with them.

This driver supports also duplex (double-sided) printing and selection of the paper input tray, if the printer is appropriately equipped.

The driver execution data currently available on this site is for version 1.4 (or newer) of HPIJS and IJS 0.33 (available in GNU GhostScript 6.53, AFPL GhostScript 7.04, and ESP GhostScript 7.05.x). It does not necessarily work with older versions of HPIJS and IJS.

To improve black text output quality use KRGB support. KRGB support is available with HPIJS 1.6. KRGB provides image enhanced printing for black text and black line drawings which can not be done with current RGB based raster drivers. KRGB requires Ghostscript support. If your copy of Ghostscript does not support KRGB, a Ghostscript KRGB patch is included in the HPIJS package. KRGB support requires no foomatic data changes.