Two-sided Printing not avail. for Brother HL-2040

[lindsey]

I know for a fact manual duplex is supported by my printer since in windows it is able to do so unproblematically.

After downloading official driver from Brother, printer works but File > Print > Page Setup > Layout > Two-sided > "NOT AVAILABLE" (option greyed out)

I need the prompts to come up to tell me when to flip the pages and visually illustrate what needs to be done. This prompt and automatic behaviour by the printer is available in Windows.

(Do not recommend to me Gnome Manual Duplex. It's a poor substitute for manual duplexing and doesn't even do what it claims to do.)

How to get two-sided printing enabled?

[whych]

Not familiar with brother printers, but have a look at your cups server settings (Open Source and Linux Forums) and see if the printer is using the cups server.
If it is, you should be able to set it up there.

[TaZMAniac]

You said you downloaded the official driver from Brother.
Was this driver made for Linux?
If it was and your double sided printing option is grayed out then Brother probably did not enable that option in their driver.

You can try complaining to them. That is much of the driver problems with Linux.
Hardware companies create drivers for Windows but not for Linux. And if they do, 1/2 the time it is a crippled driver which disables many of the features of the hardware.

The remaining hardware companies don't make Linux drivers and won't share the source code so that Linux users that can write code would be able to write decent drivers. Instead they have to try and reverse engineer drivers to make the hardware work.

Writing an email or letter to the hardware company may not do much good but at least they will know of your displeasure with their product and company.

[lindsey]

You said you downloaded the official driver from Brother.
Was this driver made for Linux?
If it was and your double sided printing option is grayed out then Brother probably did not enable that option in their driver.

You can try complaining to them. That is much of the driver problems with Linux.
Hardware companies create drivers for Windows but not for Linux. And if they do, 1/2 the time it is a crippled driver which disables many of the features of the hardware.

The remaining hardware companies don't make Linux drivers and won't share the source code so that Linux users that can write code would be able to write decent drivers. Instead they have to try and reverse engineer drivers to make the hardware work.

Writing an email or letter to the hardware company may not do much good but at least they will know of your displeasure with their product and company.

Yes, official Brother driver. Hardware companies can be so damned inconsiderate and contemptuous towards Linux users sometimes.

[Rubberman]

Unfortunately, it appears the driver doesn't support duplex printing. Myself, I won't purchase any printer or scanner unless there is solid Linux support. Unfortunately, that is not common...

For high-volume printing, I would suggest a pure Postscript printer. They seem to work best with *nix systems.

[lindsey]

Unfortunately, it appears the driver doesn't support duplex printing. Myself, I won't purchase any printer or scanner unless there is solid Linux support. Unfortunately, that is not common...

For high-volume printing, I would suggest a pure Postscript printer. They seem to work best with *nix systems.

What do you mean by a "post-script" printer? And why is it better for Linux systems?

As it happens I'm trying to decide on a printer to buy atm. Have Brother HL-5040 DCN in mind. Is this a pure post-script printer, whatever that means? Please advise.

[rickrich]

YouTube - Gnome Manual Duplex Tutorial