It depends on the brand I guess. Some Canon Pixma did immediately worked with my distro, like literally zero setup required. However, it refuses duplexing. It just won’t do it. Not driverless and not with gutenprint, although it lists the specific model, not when setting it as the default, not when setting it per job.

Yet it works on Android no problem.

You’re printin experience within Linix is going to entirely depend on which printer you have. Some work out of the box immediately others take hours to get working and digging through forums looking for drivers.

As long as your printer is supported, it’s not difficult. The problem is that if you need advanced options, like artists need usually, the options aren’t there.

I have a Postscript 3 compatible ipp network color laser printer for about 15 years now and it works without any issues with Linux, way better then it does from Windows. So I never understood way they say that printing is cumbersome with Linux.

Drivers.

IDK, my housemates printer required literally 0 setup to work with my linux VM and I’ve never had an issue. When I print from windows it’s a pain in the butt sometimes.

It’s fine now, but getting CUPS installed, configured, and getting proper drivers for your printer used to be incredibly difficult, especially if you were new to Linux and didn’t know how to do any of that stuff.

It used to back in the day, especially if you tried using shitty windows usb inkjets.

Nowadays basically all printers are network printers (they are, aren’t they?) plus we have cups which is the same thing macos uses (so manufacturers actually care).

It was terrible in the 90’s. Since CUPS became standard around 2000 it’s significantly easier.

That’s not been my experience.

Granted, printers suuuuuck. But I was legit surprised when both the printing and scanning functions in Linux were hands down better than windows.

Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.

It depends… 3d printing works fine :D

I only print docs and pictures. But in my opinion printing on Linux is largely better than Windows. It just works most of the time. And if there is an issue the solution is generally restarting the job.

Any problem I’ve ever had printing is almost exclusively a problem with the printer, it’s usually yellow or cyan. Doesn’t matter the document is black&white.

Printing is a bitch no matter the platform and its usually the producers of the printers that fail. Everyone wants to make their own standard or interpret any standard in their own way. Duplex settings? Sometimes easy to find, and sometimes called something else and put in a weird spot of the interface.

Basic printing to usb is fine on Linux. My pi zero hooked to a brother laser has been providing wifi printing for me for the last 5 years. Installed cups and connected the usb and it was rocking