I am pretty much new to Linux, so, I bought a printer did all the instructions, stumble point is driver to pick for make and model.
I’m on KDE plasma 6.0.5 and Kernel 6.6.46-1-MANJARO (64-bit) (Stable).
The desktop tool detected the printer via USB cable, printer seems to be in working order, via printer self tests etc. (PC is not talking to printer yet, at least for printing purposes).
So I had a look on AUR, not sure I hit the right search terms to download an pre-made driver.
Had a look on the brother website for drivers, but they are in rpm and deb format, I don’t have a clue how to make a wrapper for, assuming that is all I have to do to, make it work with CUPS.
I saw some people used other drivers that are not for their specific printer, but I’m not sure what would be a good pick to go down that route, I think there might be two in AUR that might work, but their numbers seem weird.
At your own risk — sorry, but this is the mandatory disclaimer — you can install debtap from the AUR. This is a tool for converting a .deb package into an Arch package and installing it.
As far as i can see the aur packages for other brother printers are just the .rpm files unpacked, so it should be pretty easy to makepkg taking and modifying a pkgbuild from one of those.
BUT:
Pretty sure you do not need any special software to work with the printing part (it will have bonus stuff like ink levels but those are shown on the printer itself). The specs say it supports morphia, airprint, ipp everywhere is not mentioned but since the other 2 are based on it…just enter the ip adress in the add new printer dialog (which is just gui frontend for cups) and that is it.
No idea about the scanner part however. Could be the same if you search for it in simple scan, i just have no experience with network scanners.
P.s. of course cups should be installed beforehand for printing to work.
p.p.s. You might need some of the brscan* packages from auf. I am not sure. Ok, i checked the model - brscan5 is for you.
That might also help - SANE - ArchWiki - i would try with sane-airscan first if i were you (i checked - it is compatible), then brscan5 if not working and at that point the scanner should be found.
You might need to disable or adjust the firewall while searching for scanner.
The usual disclaimer applies; that use of software from the AUR is not officially supported by Manjaro (or Arch) and that you should take sole responsibility for its use; no support will generally be offered.
From the AUR comments I note that the maintainer (using the term loosely) of this package will likely not offer any level of support.
Success might be better achieved through the CUPS interface, without relying on foreign drivers.
The scanner driver is available from the AUR. Make certain that you have AUR enabled in pamac and also that you have the base-devel package installed.
scanner: (in terminal or via pamac GUI:
pamac build brscan5
For the printer driver, you can follow the guide listed above or use the PKGBUILD listed below. Save as PKGBUILD, open folder where you saved PKGBUILD and execute makepkg -csr. Then install the resulting .zst file.
# Maintainer: John Doe <joe@example.com>
pkgname=brother-dcp-l2640DW-Printer-Driver
pkgver=4.1.0
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="driver for Brother dcp-l2640dw printer"
arch=("i686" "x86_64")
url="https://download.brother.com/welcome/dlf106024/dcpl2640dwpdrv-4.1.0-1.i386.deb"
license=("EULA")
groups=("base-devel")
source=("https://download.brother.com/welcome/dlf106024/dcpl2640dwpdrv-4.1.0-1.i386.deb")
md5sums=("4cafb054c91ac51a09be29467c8fd170")
package() {
tar -xf data.tar.gz -C "${pkgdir}"
}
I’ll give this a try, if and when I need to use the scanner to scan to PC. This was a good write up on what to do, so thank you. Also bookmarking this for future reference.
Most copying I do on the unit itself, was the case with the old printer that died of 12 years, think maybe ten times in all that time I used the scanner, never used the fax so dropped that from the replacement printer.
Thanks to all the rest as well, post 2 was easiest and least amount of brain work, given I just woke up and don’t have any caffeine in me.
— you can install