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can we talk about driver support in linux.
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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I had a similar situation.
I had an old laser printer that was officially unsupported on OS X. Meaning that they had a driver for OS X for a similar model, but not exactly the same model, that supposedly worked for it, but they deliberately did not let you use it with my model of printer. Found some crazy instructions online that told you to install the drivers, then change the driver with a hex editor to force it to recognize your printer as a different model. It worked, occasionally, intermittently. I spend like half a week trying to get it to work under OS X and it just wouldn't work reliably.
Tried a Windows computer. Wasted half a day installing a driver, uninstalling a driver, plugging in, unplugging, turning on, turning off, but it just couldn't recognize it.
Booted into Linux and hit "print" and it worked perfectly. Didn't even need to install a driver.