Hi everyone,
I’ve been exploring Linux setups on Framework laptops and wanted to ask about printer compatibility, especially with CUPS and network printers.
Have you noticed any scaling issues, DPI mismatches, or differences in print output compared to other systems?
I’m particularly interested in how people verify print quality and consistency after setup.
Would love to hear your experiences or any tips.
In my personal life I’ve used CUPS for decades with 2 successive laser printers. Both Just Worked™. The latest colour laser works with a Toshiba lappy running Windows, a Dell Inspiron running Xubuntu and a FW13 running Linux Mint Cinnamon.
I know I’ve led a charmed existence and I’m only printing stuff where colour and layout precision are not an issue.
This is obviously far from your use case and, as they used to say on Usenet, YMMV. I replied simply because the silence seemed deafening. 
It’s not even a question I’d think to ask. I’m still wearing out last decade’s HP multifunction so use HPLIP with CUPS, but the PPD that specifies what a printer is capable of is settled technology and … if it goes wrong it’s user error and not the printer drivers.
I’m on a Framework 16 running debian trixie with KDE Plasma desktop, and regularly use it to print MYOG patterns (to make backpacks and other bags) on my HP Envy 7640 series officejet printer. Some are provided in PDF, some I make myself using inkscape, and then export to PDF for printing.
Accuracy w.r.t. dimensions is important, so I typically do need to explicitly switch off scaling, but then it seems to do well. (I always print a 5cm x 5cm rectangle as part of the pattern pieces so that I can verify this easily).
So far my experience is good, although I do need to clean my cartridges regularly (but I guess that’s not a Linux specific issue, but more of a printer issue).
after about 20 years of using CUPS I am really reluctant to call “user error” for printer issues.. driverless PS/GS “should” just work but in practice it will not do so reliably, without any changes on printer FW or client side, it just remains a somewhat broken frontier
I’m happy that your setup works consistently but outside of a few specific printer lines the instability remains a daily reality; one day it works perfectly, the next day (no ostreee upgrade, same printer) the discovery fails or the jobs will wake the printer but not produce useful messages
this is not a framework specific problem but it remains unsolved on a broader level
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