Hi all,
Which printer brands offer the best compatibility with Manjaro?
I just bought a Brother… what a mistake, in many ways (wouldn’t even connect to my phone).
I’m returning it pronto and would like to avoid a similar struggle on the next purchase, God willing.
Hi @testingwithfire,
I bought a Pantum M6600NW printer after quite some research. I bought it specifically because it supports IPP and, works so well in fact that my Wife’s Windows computer didn’t want to print at first without the driver. Which it explicitly said isn’t necessary.
I don’t know or care about the phone, because I’m not a masochist.
I had little success with cannon, HP (HighPrize) is supported in Manjaro.
I use a HP envy photo 6200.
Brother is a great printer on Linux - depending on the type of printer - the cheap consumer printers AIO scanner type often requires additional work.
I use a Brother HL-8260CDW and IPP - works great.
I suggest you find a printer - look at the AUR (en) - Packages input the printer model - see what comes up - quite often someone has repackaged the official Brother drivers to Arch thus Manjaro by inheritance.
When you find one that has a driver package in AUR you will know you can get it up and running with a minimum effort.
I use an HP Envy Pro 6430 printer.
HP is very well supported by Manjaro.
Everything works as it should, and setting up the printer was easy.
I use a Canon PIXMA TR4720, I installed the drivers cnijfilter2 scangearmp2 from AUR, but I don’t know if that was entirely necessary as I didn’t attempt to set it up without grabbing them first. The other thing I had to do was enable avahi as I had previously disabled it.
Anyway HP usually has decent Linux (I had used them for many years previously) support if you’re willing to deal with other HP price gouging and ink shenanigans.
Problem with this question is that if you bought your printer a few years ago it may no longer be available and features change. In this case Brother has decided to use DRM to control cartridge use.
A PWG standard that allows personal computers and mobile devices to find and print to networked and USB printers without using vendor-specific software.
If you know how to set it up. Compared to Fedora our network attached HP 1025nw was not recognized and set up automatically, some manual work with try&error was necessary.
In Debian or Redhat based distributions it is detected automatically.
But hey, who wants to use these if you have Manjaro 
You probably need avahi-daemon.socket and cups.service enabled in order to have that working. 
systemctl enable --now avahi-daemon.socket
systemctl enable --now cups.service
The HP package is also required for that printer. Without it, no chance.
With a €50 device that is quite possible - it is stunning to see printers sold off - the cost of new cartridges is often higher then buying a new printer - it is really only adding to electronic waste.
My wife always tells me why buy a €200 laser printer when you can get one for €50 ink printer - and I have to explain - again - ink printers dry out when not in use - they clog up and then you buy new ink cartridges - because it doesn’t print - then the printer is unused for a longer period - and the ink dries out.
The laser printer - on the other hand keeps working - even if you don’t use for a long time - it is still working… the Brother printer I am using is such €200 color laser printer.
This is kind of off-topic for the thread but it requires a counter comment 
I understand the vendors when they chip their cartridges - especially the ink based printers.
I believe the purpose of this is - not to control or force their own cartridge - but to have the printer register if a subpar cartridge (unbranded or refilled with questionable ink) has been used as those are highly prone to leakage and and their chemical composition may be damaging the print heads.
To chipping is to avoid returns and repair issues caused by the consumer saving a few bucks on the cartridge.
It is easier to blame the vendor claiming they are controlling the consumer than realising the problems you can cause to your equipment with random ink or random cartridges.
???
What about the forum-rules ???
Threads seeking advice about specific computer product recommendations are discouraged.
I’ve closed the topic because:
The OPs request was in fact rather general;
albeit the question being not easy one to answer; given that opinions on printer brands are subjective, at best.
I’d agree that the topic is not ideal in a Support context, but in this instance the forum rules are reasonably unscathed.