Running printer drivers and software in Wine

I have a dual boot system where I’ll switch to Windows 10 to do print jobs on my Brother printer | scanner.
Since I really have little use for Win10 other than printing and using my Photoshop 6.0 suite, so I’d like to ditch W10 and not have to dual boot anymore. I haven’t used Wine in years, was wondering if a printer’s proprietary software could be successfully run in the Wine environment.

I’m not experienced with Wine but it might work I think there is a way to install drivers. But if you only use Windows to Ph 6 and print stuff why don’t you try a Windows virtual machine. Connect the printer to your VM install your Ps in there and you can use it like your dual-booted Windows without leaving Linux.

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Excellent suggestion, I had doing a VM in the back of my mind, as an alternative.

most brother printers will also just run fine on Linux natively.
Brother provides drivers for Cups on Linux.

I had run this printer natively at one time with Debian, but something broke, and the printer would just print gibberish on each and every last sheet of paper in the tray. :face_with_diagonal_mouth:

Edit: I should give the Linux drivers a go, however the Brother support site only has driver packages for .deb and .rpm based Linux systems.

yea what model ? there will be a driver build in AUR or you may not need one at all, and can use driverless option from cups

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I think most brother stuff is supported by the Linux kernel. Correct me if I’m wrong.

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https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/brother-hll2395dw/

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not the kernel but cups :wink:
and most newer brother printers simply do not need a driver at all.

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Ah … ok either way it just works :stuck_out_tongue: .

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OK, good stuff…when I get back home I’ll tinker with that system and get going native!

if you want to get the scanner going, you will have to install probably brscan4 or brscan5 from the AUR. Go to the Brother web site to see which one is required for your model.

When you install brscan, at the very end of installation they list a command you need to run for a network printer.

Then I recommend simple scan for a scanner app.

Pudge

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Should be no problem if the AUR package is good. I have a brother laser printer without scanner works fine.

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Would that work also on a network (LAN) printer? Have a xerox at work, requires proprietary driver, that sucks. Tried some fixes but not ideal.

You can try by using bridging the network on your VM with your host LAN card. So your VM would be on the same network as your network printer. Bridging would be easy with VirtualBox, you only have to select a radio button under the virtual network adapter.

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i would say it is less troublesome to use a VM compared to wine.

An alternative for Linux is https://www.turboprint.info/ the offer support for printers not working native on linux.
list of supported Printers:
https://www.turboprint.info/printers.html

This is not free as free beer but could help if you really need printing.

Also they do not show Xerox printers in the list :frowning:

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Bummer… I will try the vm.

I haven’t had time to set up a VM for running my Brother HL-L2395DW, but I wanted to add to this thread that the HL-L2395DW can function as a “stand alone” device(without the PC) that can scan/copy & print either a paper copy, or send the copy to the cloud. Probably not news to anyone but me, as this is my first full featured printer, as I’ve always bought cheap cheap ink-jets. As a livelong engineer in computing, my brother once told me that once I get a laser printer I’ll wonder what took so long. He wasn’t wrong about that.

i have a brother laser too with wifi… and I do not need to install any driver only needs to enable local hostname resolution to get the printer added as driverless …

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OP update: Got win 10 in Virtualbox, got the tools installed to share files between the host and vm. The Brother printer is working to my satisfaction in the VM, all’s good! Next I’ll be working on running the printer natively in EndevourOS. In the meantime I can discard the Win 10 install and reclaim the hdd space. As a bonus Photoshop 6.0 is functioning beautifully, probably wouldn’t be so in Wine.

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