Setup Printer and Scanner

How to setup different printers and scanners on elementary OS.

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Brother MFC-L2710DW

Arch Linux

Install the brother-mfc-l2710dw package from AUR:

yay brother-mfc-l2710dw

Then start the printing service (cups) and make sure it autostarts on boot:

# Autostart at Boot:
sudo systemctl enable cups

# Start Now:
sudo systemctl start cups

# IMPORTANT: If you get an error when starting cups, try to run cups manually as root.
# It will print the reason why it failed. For example:
# $ sudo /usr/bin/cupsd -l
# /usr/bin/cupsd: error while loading shared libraries: libpaper.so.2: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

You are now ready to add the printer by:

  • Navigating to http://localhost:631, Administration > Add Printer

  • Login with our username and password

  • Select AppSocket/HP JetDirect

  • Enter socket://123.456.78.90:9100, click Continue

  • Enter the printer's name Brother-MFC-L2710DW

  • Select Make Brother and Model Brother MFCL2710DW and click Add Printer

Scanning (+ OCR)

Since the printer is working now, lets enable its scanner. To do so, install brscan4 from AUR:

Then configure it with:

Test whether it works:

And last but not least install simple-scan to use a simple UI for scanning:

If you want OCR in addition, there is a neat little trick: Download the simple-scan-postprocessing.sh script from its code repository, make it executable and store it somewhere safe on your machine. Then open Document Scanner > Preferences configure its postprocessing:

  • Enable Postprocessing: Yes

  • Script: /path/to/your/simple-scan-postprocessing.sh

  • Script arguments: -l eng+deu

  • Keep original file: No

The script is going to apply an OCR algorithm you saved the scan as PDF and makes it searchable.

Please Note: The postprocessing script requires Docker for its work - so make sure you installed it on your machine.

elementary OS: 6.1 Jólnir

Download the latest "Driver Install Tool" for Linux from the Brother MFC-L2710DW download page (linux-brprinter-installer-2.2.3-1.gz at the time of this writing).

Then install the drivers as documented on the download page (open the Terminal and execute the following commands):

HP Color Laser Jet Pro MFP M281 fdw

elementary OS: 6.1 JólnirStatus: Verified

Printing

In order to be able to print with a HP Color Laser Jet Pro MFP M281 fdw on elementary OS 6.1, you don't have to do anything. It works right out of the box.

Scanning

Even though the printer itself works out of the box, you need to install a proprietary plugin from HP to be able to scan anything. Because HPLIP added official support for elementary OS 6.1 in a newer HPLIP version, the easiest way to do so is to update the installed HPLIP version.

To do so, go to the HPLIP download page and download the latest version for elementary OS (v3.22.2 at the time of this writing).

For installation, execute the following commands in your Terminal:

Now we are finally ready to download the proprietary plugin with the following command:

Further Reading

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