Oh God, this brought back a traumatic memory. I was hanging out after hours at our office to look after a meetup group that was using our space that night. Nothing tricky, make sure people can get in, keep the lights on, make sure nobody sets the place on fire.
I was plugging away on my personal laptop which had Linux on it. Having a great time doing something or other when one of the meetup organisers approached me with a USB stick and asked if I could help them print out some signs to help people know where to go.
My install was rock solid, fast and set up exactly the way I wanted, but in that moment none of that mattered because it was me who froze. I thought back to all the decisions that lead me to that situation, even the conversation with a coworker a few months ago about Linux who literally said "I love Linux but one day I'm just afraid I'll have to print something or whatever and I won't be able to". How foolish I was to dismiss the wisdom in his words that day, and now my worst nightmare had come to pass.
I swallowed hard, looked the organiser in the eyes, and told them I couldn't help them. I didn't even try. Best to rip the band-aid off, disappoint them now and get it over with. After the glaring admission left my mouth I waited for the inevitable response. I was a fraud, nothing more than a self proclaimed computer geek who couldn't accomplish a rudimentary task despite all my time studying and tinkering. It was over, I guess it wasn't imposter syndrome after all, I really was an imposter and now I'd been discovered.
But instead the the organiser just smiled and said "that's totally ok, we were just a bit disorganised and didn't print it before coming this time. Thanks for your help anyway!" And everything was fine. This time.
Many years ago, my aunt bought an old, terribly specced laptop and couldn't get Windows to run on it. I installed Ubuntu and everything was fine - she could check her email and browse toxic conspiracy theories on Facebook and all was good with the world.
Two years later when visiting I got my first support request - would I mind showing her how to print something? No problem, but would you mind showing me what you were trying? She was selecting menu items to send to a virtual printer, not the one on the network. I show her the correct printer to send to and the thing prints. Easy. Out of curiosity, I check the outbox queue for the virtual printer. Over a hundred documents, going back two years.
For two years she'd been unable to print, and every single time she'd ever attempted to print something she'd followed the exact same steps that didn't work, and just accepted that this was the way things were.
SMH.
printers are annoying
I just recently went through some linux printer woes. When my toner cartridge got down below 25% documents spooled from my Linux machine would fail with an out of toner error. Files from windows and the diagnostic pages from the printer itself printed just fine. Turned out I had been using a slightly incorrect print driver on my Linux machine this entire time. After a TON of digging I managed to find the correct driver and was able to print again. Only wasted most of a morning figuring it out. Lol!
"Can someone help me figure out how to print a file?"
"Pft, why would you want to?"
Def a skill issue. But seeing as they are using arch I have no doubts that they will get over this and ultimately come out learning more about Linux and computers overall (which is probably their goal seeing as they are using arch)
I've never had issues printing on arch (btw)
sudo pacman -Syu --needed cups system-config-printer avahi nss-mdns foomatic-{db,db-{engine, nonfree}}sudo systemctl enable --now cups.socket avahi-daemon.serviceRebooting after helps if it doesn't find the printer right away.
Odd how this is the opposite of my experience. My mother is unable to print or scan things 2/3 of the time on her HP printer using windows 10. You know, the OS whose parent company has very close relations with HP, and is updated in a manner that forces their users to use the most up-to-date official HP drivers, even going as far as to prevent them from using any other drivers, including the default windows ones.
Meanwhile, my Linux laptop can operate the printer just fine. Never had an issue. I can even operate the loading tray, despite the HP tech support reps telling my mother it is broken.
The main thing base Arch doesn't install is a bootloader and graphical environment. I think most of the time installing a DE also installs the various tools that may be missing from a fresh Arch install.
In any case, I've never had trouble printing on Arch or Arch derivatives. Try following the Arch wiki article on CUPS. So long as you install CUPS I really don't see what printer problems could be attributed to Arch rather than problems with your printer and CUPS on Linux
To be fair, printers are designed from black magic and require regular blood sacrifices. And that's with mainstream support, which arch is not.
does he have a hp printer?
Maintaining a printer is hell on any OS. I learned to not own a printer long ago. That's what places that offer printing services are for. And it's not very expensive typically
My personal printer works flawlessly on Linux, except that it cannot be convinced to print double-sided, no matter how deep I dig into the settings. Boils my blood.
I have not had any issues printing on Linux. Although I use ubunutu instead of arch so maybe that's the reason. I also use an Epson printer which I have never had an issue hooking up to any PC over WiFi.
I wonder if any printers run Linux... 🤔
Also just because it's related and may not be common knowledge: https://www.man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/lpr.1.html
💀shart Linux.
