r/sysadmin • u/Certain-Mountain-564 • 20h ago

Question Cloud Printing without Print Drivers

Many organizations moving away from print servers.

But the printer industry is moving away from print drivers.

The problem: We use printix and you cannot deploy printers without drivers. But manufacturers like brother dont offer print drivers for macOS. Our brother printers are not compatible with PostScript. There are some very old print drivers from macOS X but the print quality is very bad. Brother says "use AirPrint". But AirPrint is not compatible with printix.

Windows is also moving away from print drivers.

5 Upvotes

73% Upvoted

34 comments sorted by

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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership 20h ago

It looks like you missed the "requirements and constraints" portion of your project standup.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 20h ago

That are only 4 from about 15 printers. Even if we had known, it wouldn't have affected the project. Brother is also the only manufacturer that has problems with PostScript. Anyone printing from a Mac and wanting high quality simply has to switch to a different printer. Mac + printing has never been a good combination.

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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership 20h ago

Over 20 percent of your fleet is incompatible with your proposed solution, and your position is "it's fine, we couldn't have done anything about it, anyway"

Jesus...

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 19h ago

You're the best. You would have known that a printer that once cost $500 and advertises itself as suitable for business use doesn't offer any drivers for macOS. I didn't buy these printers. Besides, it's easier to find a suitable printer than suitable software.

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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership 19h ago

I wouldn't have known that. I also wouldn't have assumed it was true OR false.

You see, I value my time and resources. I prefer NOT to get to the middle or end of a project and hear my boss say "FUCK! Are you telling me this isn't going to work?" because that seems like something that is super simple to avoid.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 19h ago

I implemented the project together with an external solution provider. Our printix tenant is a subtenant from them. I asked him, "Does printing from macOS work with Printix?" He said, "Yes, every printer works via the redirector". This is a company that has already set up dozens of tenants with clients. Furthermore, the situation before: Before, they had a Windows 10 Pro Tower. And then they shared the printers on the network. Only three printers were compatible with that setup.

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u/Naclox IT Manager 19h ago

So go back to that solution provider and tell them that they sold you a non-working product and get a refund.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 18h ago

I will definitely follow up with them. But I think it's also my boss's fault. When you try to integrate prosumer printers into a corporate environment, it usually goes wrong in cases like this. But those weren't all the printers, by the way. We have a total of 25 label printers. Before Printix, it wasn't possible to centrally distribute these label printers on macOS. Users had to manually install the driver and add them via their IP address. Furthermore, 95% of all print jobs come from our ERP system. These jobs go directly from the web application to the Windows server and are processed by its spooler. Yes, printing on macOS is still not ideal for us, but we've made significant progress overall. Before, it simply wasn't possible.

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u/Naclox IT Manager 18h ago

Personally I would just get rid of Macs entirely, but I'm going to assume you have less control of that than you do the printers.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 18h ago

The thing is before printix we had 6  macOS devices and 30 windows devices. After we have 12.. On windows you can do want you want it works out of the box.

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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership 19h ago

Yeah, I always assume the salespeople at my vendors know their product like they wrote it themselves. That's NEVER caused a problem for me.

I'm not going to go back and forth describing professionalism to someone willing to argue about it.

Have a great day. Or don't. It makes no difference to me.

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u/MeetJoan 20h ago

You're caught between two vendors going opposite directions. Printix is built around driver deployment, Brother's answer for macOS is AirPrint, and those don't meet.

Have you asked Printix directly about IPP Everywhere support? That's where the whole industry's heading and if it's not on their roadmap that basically answers whether you stay with them.

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u/Mindestiny 20h ago

I'm just gonna throw it out there - Brother really isn't an enterprise printer company. I'm not at all surprised they came back with "use airprint." Brother printers and the concept of a print server are pretty much oil and water.

Time to upgrade to a print vendor that supports your deployment model and plays nice with modern OS printing arcitecture.

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u/kombiwombi 19h ago edited 19h ago

AirPrint is basically IPP Everywhere, which is the modern OS printing architecture.

Worst case put the AirPrint printers in their own isolated subnet, have the printer server dual homed: present in that printer subnet and present in a generally reachable subnet.

The basic requirement here is that the print server support printers with IPP Everywhere (ie, mDNS service advertisement, PDF and IPP). If printix does not do this then it has no future.

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u/bakonpie 20h ago

Microsoft is smoking the good stuff thinking their generic driver for universal print is an adequate replacement. doesn't support all the additional functions of expensive MFPs and doesn't support wide format printers. government and utilities will never be able to adopt them unless they make serious improvements to the generic driver.

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u/FrankNicklin 20h ago

What model printers, never had an issue with Brother and MacOS and what evidence do you have that Windows are moving away from print drivers because as far as I know that a long way from being true. Older printers on MacOS are generally supported by CUPS.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 20h ago

CUPS also makes problem with Tahoe by the way. Printing on Mac is a disaster. 

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u/FrankNicklin 20h ago

Never ever had problems printing from Macs. I have a very old Canon MP printer at home and works perfectly fine. We have a mix of Xerox, Brother, Kyocera, HP, Canon around our clients again none have problems printing from Macs.

We run Windows servers with local client printer setups again no issues printing or using the Print server options.

Any issues printing from Macs is generally down to improper Bonjour config which doesnt work well across VLANS and/or mDNS for the same reason. Printing via LPR or IP has never been a problem.

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u/K3rat 20h ago

Ugh, AirPrint crap….  It honestly sounds like you bought the wrong print management solution or printer.  Fix that and your problem resolves.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 20h ago

I've never bought any of this printers. The only printer that i buyed in this company is a Epson Workforce 😎 I'm working with what's available now.

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u/K3rat 19h ago

My work did that once with some off the shelf b/w desktop printers they bought on grant.  It worked terribly and they asked why.  I told them home office stuff isn’t built with security I mind most of the time.  We have to isolate equipment from each other because if we get owned it is a bad day for a lot of people.  Not all services (AirPrint) are meant to work in that kind of environment.  next time work with IT before purchase to find a solution that will be well supported in the environment.  

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u/ISeeTheFnords 20h ago

Have you tried using it with the open source brlaser driver? I've never used it or Printix, but it might be an option.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 20h ago

Brlaser? Never heard of it but i will check it out. 

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u/Sinister_Nibs 20h ago

Deploy printer to server. Share printer from server.
Done.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 19h ago

We work with azure AD. We have no hybrid envoirement. The printers are on the windows servers from ERP. The user send the print job to the Printix Redirector which redirects the job to the local printer port. 

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u/Sinister_Nibs 19h ago

You have no servers in azure?

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 18h ago

No for what? There is no reason to do that. 

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u/Sinister_Nibs 18h ago

To connect printers.

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u/blow_slogan 20h ago

For macos you should be using a bash script with your mdm, like jamf pro. Super simple, don’t need printix for mac.

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u/HorrorCommunity3246 Jr. Sysadmin 19h ago

Uniflow is not half bad

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u/GremlinNZ 2h ago

Yep, using this (or deploying it). One day we'll remove all the regular printers and it will be all Uniflow.

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u/discgman 19h ago

The best I can offer you is a mini print server like the good old days. They actually sell them on amazon. Maybe you can install the driver that way. It will make it harder to remote to the printer though.