EDIT: I purchased the Brother L2690DW on a Clearance deal from Walmart and so far it has been a breeze using it between my Linux desktop and laptop.
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.
Usually, I’d agree with you, but I use mine about half the time as a copy machine. To have to scan on one device and print on another would be annoying, I have enough trouble making the thing work already, I don’t want that trouble doubled.
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.
On most phones the result will be excellent. It’s up to the app you use to clean the image but there are excellent ones out there. And the phone cameras have very good resolutions.
The flow is what you make of it. I’m pretty sure you can find a solution to upload, print, email or whatever the images if you want.
My wife uses an app called Adobe Scan and it seems to work well enough. We scan receipts, warranty documents, paperwork, etc. with it.
You need to do something like this (and add LED strip).
Or, and hear me out, you could buy a Brother printer/scanner combo for not much more than just a printer, and not have to fuck around with building a scanner jig for your phone
True, but that’s only really an option for really small volumes. For most people the scanner in an all in one will do just fine.