Making a printer end-to-end (hardware, all the way to the driver) is actually fairly straightforward for the most part. Incumbents have made it look difficult and involved. Here’s the basic rundown from the top (you pushing the print button):
App converts the content to be printed to a format understood by the OS Printing API layer (all OSes support things like PDF, Postscript and bitmaps). No conversion is needed if the content is already in one of those formats.
The OS Printing API will, depending on the printer, either rasterizes the document into bitmap, coverts it to another vector format (e.g. from PDF to PS) or simply passes the document through. This depends on the printer and its driver definitions.
Printer receives the document in a format it understands and rasterizes it into pixels appropriate for its hardware spec.
Bunch of stepper motors controlled by the onboard computer start moving the paper and the print head (in case of an Inkjet) and the nozzles dispense ink at the right locations based on the pixel data.
Making a basic printer prototype from scratch, including the drivers, for someone like @kieran_levin should take no more than two weeks. But here’s the catch: the print head or the toner drum and the laser system that goes with it, is the hard part. You can’t call up HP or Canon and ask them to supply you some. They don’t sell those to others (much like McDonalds doesn’t sell their Big Mac sauce to other restaurants). All the other parts of the printer are commodity parts that anyone can buy for peanuts.
As for software and drivers, with sufficient onboard compute, the printer can trivially accept straight up PDFs, Postscripts, bitmaps from the OS and rasterize them using Ghostscript on the device. That makes the printer driver itself a trivial piece of software (which makes supporting things like Airprint and the like a breeze). How much sufficient compute costs you ask? $15 (Raspberry Pi Zero W — actually way overpowered for a printer, but is pretty flexible and fits well into a repairable ecosystem albeit at a higher cost that a custom designed board). Most likely cheaper in high volumes and it takes care of WiFi and enables a great desktop class UI experience (not the laggy low res crap you get today).
Keep in mind that Framework shipped their first units with a mere 15 people or so on the payroll. That’s system development, firmware, drivers, industrial design, marketing and websites, supply chain management, and many more. That was years ago! Framework has an incredibly capable team that knows how to design for mass manufacturing.
It’s not as simple as you may think. Have you ever wondered why official printer drivers are 100+ MB? There is a reason, I tell you some secrets. In some countries, the printer has to prevent the printing of local currency, this means the driver needs to detect and erase it before printing. The printer might also need to print some “hidden” marks (usually small dots in non printable area, barely visible for human eyes), so law enforcement can identify the printer that was used. This all does also apply to scanners and foto copiers.
Now you might imagine the effort of developing official printer drivers for each country.
Besides that, the printer business is not about selling you printers. These are cheap and don’t break often. They make their money with selling you overpriced ink. They put enourmous effort into the ink catridges, so you are not able to use 3rd party ink.
Businesses get the printers for free, they usually pay per printed page. So, the printers itself are very very reliable.
That’s a Windows and Mac bloat and has little to do with printer drivers specifically. My office printer MFC-9330CDW has a 35MB package for Windows (driver only — full package is much bigger) and a <1MB package for Linux. And Linux is officially supported, so whatever feature they’re legally obligated to put into the Windows version, they are obligated to put into the Linux one.
Not a secret Fairly well known for at least 20+ years (my 2004 HP printer would cut off a Euro half way through and print a URL to educate me )
Those are implemented inside of the printer firmware so they can’t be trivially bypassed.
There really isn’t such a thing as “printer driver per country”. A quick stroll through your favorite printer brand should make that obvious. Again, if you want to see what a bare bone “legal” printer driver usually is made up of, look at the Linux ones. They don’t ship with all the junk ware that Mac and Windows versions ship with.
That’s “most” printers. There are printers on the market today that have ink tanks you can fill with any ink with no way for the printer to know what brand of ink you’re using. Ecotank is an example.
Business isn’t the focus of Framework (for the time being at least) so they don’t need to worry about the economics of that.
There are printer drivers for countries. If you want to print Euros, install US drivers. That’s a trick for a market leader I know. But don’t tell it to the criminals
Just caught up with last night’s WAN Show. Linus let drop that he met @nrp for the first time yesterday and was shown some embargoed products. Hopefully, we will be seeing what’s new on Thursday. His comments are here, if you are interested.
Came here to say this. Apparently they shot a video while he was there; maybe whatever they’re announcing is going to be featured on LTT after the announcement?
OK, it’s Saturday so I’ll let my imagination go a bit crazy.
It’s a printer, but not for paper. It’s a 3D(ish) printer that lets you print your own PCBs at home (or at a small-volume fab setup), maybe with some basic component surface mount capability built in.
It’s a whole level of meta disruption in consumer electronics, the kind I’d very much support.
How about a 11 in. super durable, repairable Chromebook with enough capacity to dual boot a lightweight Linux distro? This would be ideal for the educational market and so valuable to anyone with children. They break things easily and those lightweight, plastic pieces of junk are no match for them. I know from experience. Parents, students, and educators the world over would be thrilled!
I mean they’re like that because they’re dirt cheap. I remember my school buying them in bulk for <$50 each. And they’ve only succeeded in the education market because they’re dirt cheap.
For framework to keep their promise of long lasting products they’d have to be at least a couple hundred dollars, likely more Not sure where that would go.
What do you think about Linus comments when he said: “shut up and take my money product”, is he talking about the laptop or about the new product? If it’s not about the laptop, then the new product is not a paper printer for sure, because that would not be that exciting.
I’m pretty sure he was describing his investment in Framework, not talking about a particular product. He was explaining that he did not do the usual due diligence he might have done for a regular investment.
@Shiroudan@FaultedBeing@Anachron I have no clue what to make of that photo, and given that @nrp said it’s still up and not deleted, is it possible the photo doesn’t have any hints?
Fairly well known for at least 20+ years (my 2004 HP printer would cut off a Euro half way through and print a URL to educate me 
)
