What (Brother) MFC-L2860DW drivers are best for what circumstances?

[rokejulianlockhart (Mr. Beedell, Roke Julian Lockhart (RJLB))]

I want to know which to install, and why. To summarise, I intend to scan and print, via 802.11ac and 802.3. However, multiple official and unofficial drivers exist for this.

Context

Whereas support.brother.com/g/b/downloadlist.aspx?source_c=cinst&c=gb&lang=en&prod=mfcl2860dw_eu&os=127 officially provides:

1. Printer Drivers

2. Scanner Drivers

3. PC-FAX Drivers

^[1]

…dnf5 search brother returns printer-driver-brlaser:

brlaser is a CUPS driver for Brother laser printers.

Although most Brother printers support a standard printer language
such as PCL or PostScript, not all do. If you have a monochrome
Brother laser printer (or multi-function device) and the other open
source drivers don’t work, this one might help.

For a detailed list of supported printers, please refer to:

GitHub - Owl-Maintain/brlaser: open-source CUPS driver for monochrome Brother...

I don’t know what alternative it refers to. Regardless, with it installed, I see:

^[2]

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1. discuss.kde.org/t/29945/5 ↩︎

2. bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=511477#c1 ↩︎

[pg-tips (P G)]

I wonder if going driverless would also be an option. It works fine for me, printing and scanning on an Ethernet-connected Brother inkjet. (But I can’t speak to your laser model.)

Discussed at a bit more length here:

What's the best multifunctional color laser printer (MFP) for Silverblue?

Dear community. I’d love to switch from Fedora Workstation to Fedora Silverblue. One of my requirements is to use a multifunctional color laser printer (print/scan) via network. I need to buy a new printer anyway, so I thought I’d give it a try to see if anyone has a recommendation for a color laser MFP which can be fully used under Fedora Silverblue. I read that there are numerous issued with HP printers under Silverblue, but how about Brother offering RPM packaged drivers? Any recommendation f…

[vekruse (Villy Kruse)]

@pg-tips

I wonder if going driverless would also be an option. It works fine for me, printing and scanning on an Ethernet-connected Brother inkjet. (But I can’t speak to your laser model.)

This printer should be Mopria certified according to https://mopria.org/certified-products#company6

Therefore, use the driverless printer driver.

[gnwiii (George N. White III)]

For most people, no driver is needed: IPP Driverless Printing supports Apple AirPrint printers (at least until until Apple changes Airprint).

Brother Printers that support AirPrint (aka driverless printing)

[rokejulianlockhart (Mr. Beedell, Roke Julian Lockhart (RJLB))]

@gnwiii and @vekruse, thanks. Indeed, driverless printing works:

^[1]

Initially, two printers were added, one of which didn’t work (I believe, the non-driverless one). It disappeared after a reboot, alongside the ability to add it:

^[1:1]

I am impressed by how far this technology has progressed, since the days of my previous EPSON XP-247. ^[2] This was the last driver I needed to manually install on Linux.

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1. discuss.kde.org/t/29945/5 ↩︎ ↩︎

2. bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=499072#c4 ↩︎

[gnwiii (George N. White III)]

@rokejulianlockhart

I am impressed by how far this technology has progressed

Much of the work was supported by Apple: https://github.com/apple/cups/wiki/IPP-(Everywhere)-Mini-Tutorial.

[vekruse (Villy Kruse)]

And is continued by Mopria and Open Printing. The latter is now hosting the Cups development after having been hosted by Apple for may years,