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Linux-Friendly Label Printer Recomendations?
pdkl95 writes "I have been using some small, simple desktop label printers for quite a while now. Unfortunately, it's rapidly becoming clear that my printing needs are for something far more 'industrial strength.' Several of the label printers have failed, and they never really had the management features I wanted. So, does anybody have recommendations on label printers, that can hold up to a quite heavy load? The catch is that I'm printing to them from CUPS under Linux, and it seems like specialty-printers are a windows-centric field."
There is probably some cloud-based Web 2.0 service written in JavaScript that will make your labels and post them out to you for a nominal fee
We use Datamax I series at work printing from linux. All the configuration can be done with simple ascii characters, also the label fornating.
Silly. He's talking about roll-fed label printers that are much smaller in dimensions than a regular printer.
I am not that familiar with printing in general, but I know the printer company/brand Brother often (if not always) releases Linux compatible drivers for their hardware. They are great for any standard printer. If you can find any label printers that they make, I imagine it would work very well. It is probably at least worth Googling....
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Or, barring that, have you looked into any of the Xerox professional printing stations like you might find in a FedEx-Kinkos?
I understand that this may not be actually answering your question, but, if you have *any* Windows systems in your office running XP Professional or Vista Business/Enterprise, you might try getting a label printer for one of those. These OSes come with IIS, and you can easily write a .NET web service that you can then access via PHP from your Linux machine and print labels that way. Yes, a hacky solution indeed, but it works if you can't find any compatible printers for Linux.
It sucks that manufacturers don't really make printer drivers for a lot of high-end equipment for Linux, but I suppose that's the nature of things, when the vast majority of people who would need them tend to only use Windows or OS X.
intermec - they're good machines, work for many many years. I print labels from linux to them all the time. the label printer is networked with a older hp jetdirect via parallel cable
can't you just write your own drivers? I mean, that's the power of open source right? If you don't like it code it yourself or bugger off?
I use the Brother PT-9500PC a lot. Very well supported under linux, they have their own driver page. Connects by USB.
Try Sato America.
http://www.satoamerica.com/
They are industrial oriented. You can get all sorts of solutions, of which the most universal would be serial based. You can connect those up to almost anything with a serial port, fill it up with large rolls of labels and drive it all in your own code if you want to.
Yes, I know, their own software is Windows based. Don't let that be the stumbling block.
Two jobs ago I worked at a luxury goods manufacturer and we printed items tags on a SATO serial printer off of our main frame. Its just a matter of sending the right control codes over the serial port.
Labels come in most shapes and sizes. I believe we're using the LP2844 at the office; I'd have to double check but I believe UPS and FedEx send these out to their customers as well.
They are rugged. CUPS prints to them trivially. Labels are not terribly expensive, and they are fast.
If you're willing to do your own output generation, Zebra Technologies provides programming references for their printers.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
One recommendation if you want a really nice looking label: Get a copy of Zebra's software(maybe given out with the printer?) and design your label there. When you're done, tell it to print to a virtual serial port(google it for the details) that you have looping back into [insert favorite terminal emulator here]. Save the dump of what their design software tried sending, and learn from that instead of just reading through the ZPL spec.
You're assuming that he's labeling letters rather than labeling something like test tubes on a one-by-one basis (ie, a sheet of labels would be wasted)
Googling around, it looks like if you take care of a few oddities you can use certain Dymo LabelWriters with CUPS. There's an older howto here. We've got a few we've used (on windows) for years.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I use zebra printers with a couple of clients - Linux + CUPS, no problem. You can find them online dirt cheap, just clean the rollers with alcohol to get them printing good.
Do you have ESP?
We tried this at the office for a while.
To print one label at a time is wasteful; to get users to specify how many labels are already used off the sheet is too hard (and slow), and the printers are slow and prone to jam when you re-feed the label sheets.
This solution lasted about 4 weeks for us, then we were told to spend the $200 or so and get a real printer (Zebra, I believe LP2844).
It's not the SIZE that's the problem, it's that users are idiots and really need most of the work already done for them.
Q: Can anyone recommend a Linux-friendly label printer?
Typical Slashdot answer: You can get a label printer from X company. If you install the software and loop the output back into a terminal you can hack the control codes and design your own printer driver.
Buzzword answer: Using a cloud service, you could upload your printing needs via a lightweight AJAX interface and have the results mailed to you.
Sane answer: Get a cheap Windows PC and choose from the many supported label printers.
Of course, the sane answer gets modded to -1 Troll.
I've rolled my own "driver" for a rollfed color label printer before.
It's a lot of work and it sucks and you should just buy Bartender and use Windows.
I don't say this lightly, but it really is much easier. Only roll your own if bartender absolutely can't do what you want.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Can you put up a how-to?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
I have a feeling that there will be a lot of posts for ZEBRA printers, and I have to agree. You'll need to format your labels with ZPL code, but it's fairly simple and straightforward once you get the first one configured. A majority of my company's customers use the 105SL model printing from RHEL 4/5 systems and Fedora releases. Definitely CUPS compatible! One of these customers actually has four of that particular model, and they print out 100,000+ labels every couple of weeks.
I haven't had many hardware issues with them, but if they do go out, it's best if you're in a location where a Zebra certified technician can reach you. This isn't a problem for most major cities, though if you're in a rural area, it may be a little more difficult.
Please define where is the border between "desktop label printer" and "industrial strength". Are Dymo printers "desktop"? Are CNC mills "industrial strength"? What kind of labels are those anyway? Would it be easier to order the labels in bulk from someone else, providing eps templates and receiving rolls of pre-printed numbered labels?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yet Another Great!
Can you put up a how-to?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
It would be helpful if you posted more information about what you're trying to print labels for and what size/shape/environmental requirements there are for the labels.
I can give you an example of what I have done for labels in the past though. I had a requirement to create thousands of labels for our inventory system. The only requirement was they had to be barcode readable and printed on small labels so we could tag our network equipment with them. The solution I came up with about 4 years ago (and is still in use today) was to use Avery 8167 (I believe) labels which are 1.75"x.5". I created the first sheet by hand using MS word since that's what the template I had access to was for. I used the "Free 3 of 9" font which is available for free on the web and put something like "*10001*10001" in each cell, incrementing by one each time. The font interprets the number surrounded by asteriks as a barcode and prints the same thing again in clear text. I then adjusted the font settings to the appropriate sizes and saved it. I then wrote a perl script that would parse the binary word document and change the numbers in each cell. It started with the number I fed it on the command line and ran through to the end.
Since our equipment is reasonably hands off, this system works well. We had tried doing this with a dedicated label printer before I started there and no one could reliably get the printer to work. It's a good solution since you can easily print off labels quickly from any machine since any laser printer can be printed to. It would probably be even easier to implement in openoffice since the document would be saved in XML and would be easier to parse.
we run our erp on linux and we have 10 zebra 105 SLs all work great, each one prints about 100 - 200 4x6 labels a day and i have a couple more that only do hangtags and they print out about 500 - 1000 hangtags a day (we make t-shirts)
the innocent shall suffer!
And here's a couple of linkies:
a Brother page
a google search page
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
An AC posted one down a bit further.
(I replied with some links. Haven't used it myself.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
at google
(Not that I've used them, but I'm interested, too.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Not only can you print from linux (it's ascii text sent over port 9100), you can also run linux on the fucking printer itself.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
A quick search on google produced this.
Any other information people would need?
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
Epson has several thermal and impact POS printers (TM-T90, TM-L90, etc) capable of doing labels, receipts and barcodes.
A few (inc. TM-T90 & L90) work well in Linux.
I recently purchased a Seiko SmartLabel 440 (http://www.siibusinessproducts.com/products/slp440.html) and got it working under both x86 and arm ubuntu with cups (http://www.siibusinessproducts.com/support/slpsoft.html)
My previous company supported a variety of RH / CentOS / SCO running D3/Pick and generally all of them used network attached Zebra printers. These printers were absolutely vital to their operations (shipping / packing labels and tickets) and the few problems we had were always related to the print subsystems on the different OSs. Check them out, their support is pretty decent too.
We currently use DataMax I Series printers (specifically the DMX-I 4208 model). We've also used Zebra printers in the past. These are heavy duty printers using roll-fed label media (there's an option for a custom cutterhead, so you can actually have a label length specific to each print job).
These things are built like tanks and they have been amazingly trouble-free. You'll pay a price corresponding to this level of reliability but we've found them worth it. We print literally thousands of labels a month in critical line-of-business applications. The printers function much like laser printers in terms of their capability--all points addressable printing, DPL (equivalent to HP PCL) rendering language, integrated IP networking, self-hosted web administration pages, and so on.
Now the (few & relatively minor) downsides. I cannot comment on their Linux driver support. We use Windows Seagull drivers to host ours (Datamax doesn't make their own drivers, last I checked). Also we had to get 1 firmware update and 1 driver update to resolve a couple of infrequent but otherwise knotty problems.
There's no way to have multiple label media pre-loaded and software programmable (the equivalent of a cut-sheet laser printer's addressable drawers).
Oh, and they come with a decent manual. How many printers do that now?
I just started testing a Zebra LP2824Z at work to replace our old label printers. Looks promising so far, just write the label printer commands yourself and spool them raw (lpr -l) to the printer through cups, works fantastic. Oh, and it's a network printer.
Why not buy whatever printer you want and write your own driver? Isn't that the whole point of open source software?
In my experience, a sheet of labels can be run through a printer multiple times IF:
(1) it gets pulled from the end, not from the side
(2) you try to use the labels at the bottom first for best traction on subsequent passes, OR you flip it over and run it from the other end the next time (Avery sheets are symmetrical)
(3) your printer doesn't have a faint bleed in it somewhere, as this will add up on multiple passes. (This might be acceptable anyhow, if the bleed is a color and the desired print is black.)
The straighter the paper path, the more you can re-use the same sheet. Also, this minimizes the chances of a label peeling off inside the printer. Thus, if your printer has a door where a duplexer can be attached (but you don't have one attached), it might help to open that door instead of making the sheet curl back around to the output tray.
Even the most demanding printer will let me run a sheet twice, once from each end. Surprisingly, I have found HP LaserJets (both monochrome and color) to be quite good about accepting the same label sheet over and over, even with the majority of the labels gone. It's the expensive heavy-duty printers that are liable to start eating labels. There seems to be a correlation to the ability to print envelopes. If it can, it should be perfectly happy running label sheets with bare spots.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Go to the nearest electronics store and buy 20 random pieces of hardware. Plug them into 4 computers, running any modern Linux distro, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. Tell me how many of them work without installing additional software on each OS.
That's not a valid comparison at all.
Installing a driver isn't a problem. If it exists.
We use zebra printers all in our WH with linux workstations. I just write ZPL (similar to postscript) by hand for all our labels and our ERP application spits it out to /dev/lp0. Benefits that it requires no printer subsystem and you can send labels out to the printer at the absolute maximum possible speed.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
Intermec label printers are amazing and will not disappoint. Our hospital prints tons through them and uses CUPS to drive it all.
If you want heavy duty get a zebra 140xiIII printer. They are industrial and would do nicely with b/w print
It is in most corporate environments. I can bring any hardware I want to work (I love my ergonomic keyboard), as long as it works in Windows XP out of the box. No driver downloads/installs allowed.
And don't forget the very large number of home users who are baffled by instructions like "click on the link" or "insert the disc". Installing a driver is, quite often, "a problem".
glabels = requires a gnome desktop due to dependency issues, or,,,
OpenOffice and these label templates WorldLabel_dot_com
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Yes yes, we all know Windows can't support hotplug hardware until you install third-party drivers. Is there really any need for that sort of Microsoft bashing?
try a printer from zebra technologies - www.zebra.com - they are supported using CUPS, really fast and have web pages for management. they also have a free printer management package called ZebraNet Bridge
We've got a Dymo LabelWriter Turbo 330. We do anywhere from 20-100 labels a day with no problems. I have not used this on Linux; however, Dymo does offer a Linux driver for it here: http://www.dymo.com/media/Software/dymo-cups-drivers-1.2.0.tar.gz
One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet is that most of these label printers are THERMAL printers, meaning no cartridge / toner / drum / etc. to deal with - you just have to buy the thermal compatible labels. A great source I have found for the roll labels is: http://www.labelsdirect.com/ We use shipping labels to print sold tags and inventory tags for the furniture store I work at and can get a roll of 300 labels for about $7.00. Compare that to a package of sheet fed labels, along with the time it would take to deal with them, and the added toner/drum costs of a laser printer and you will see why most businesses go with the label printers for high volume output!
I buy labels on 8.5 x 11 sheets. The label sizes don't matter. You can use any label you want.
Set up a OOo Calc spreadsheet. The first column is your left border. Next is your left label. next is the right label. Next is right border.
Top row is top border. Then set the next 10 or so rows as label heights.
Getting a clear picture how this is done?
Set your column and row to show border lines and print one to see how close you can get to a factory label sheet.
A little experimentations you will soon have a label printing sheet you can use forever and will work 1st time every time.
Once you've dialed the thing in, set borders to not shown.
You can now print to any cell you wish. Cell can be formated with any text, centered, word wrapped, anything you want.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
http://www.google.com/search?q=HP+sp400
It's a handheld wireless printer/scanner that prints directly onto boxes, no labels required. Pretty slick.
These were developed for UPS but anyone can buy them (if you have the money to burn.)
No mention of Linux drivers, etc. however.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Brother provide Linux drivers for different distros on their site : http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/
Or maybe they're actually doing work and don't want to sit there counting labels, going back to their desk and changing the print settings, and then dashing back and coaxing a fragile sheet of labels through a machine that will eat it 30% of the time, instead of just clicking the little printer button and peeling off a label.
Same difference.
Also, the printer was next to the computer.
Either way, the right answer is use the right tool for the job - continuous feed labels.
Why, there are many printers that Linux supports. The problem is that the manufacturer doesn't directly support them so it's currently difficult figuring out which one were. That's were asking a community of people who uses *nix comes in handy. And yes, there is a difference between Linux supporting something and the manufacturer supporting it. Often that difference is only in where to look for drivers and capabilities and who to ask for help. It's not difficult, especially if you take your time and look around.
If you would just look around, you would see that almost every Zebra printer is supported, Brothers generally are too. The only reason he would need to purchase a windows PC is if he was intellectually lazy and didn't look. Obviously that isn't the case seeing how he was checking with the rest of us.
I agree. I used to work at a facility that had more than a dozen of the zebra printers, of various models, all connected via ethernet to a Unix spooler.
They would print 1 label at a time up to a couple of rolls depending on the application.
I think any post here that doesn't include a direct link should be modded troll or off topic.
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Ha! Almost forgot.
Seiko Smart Label Printer 450
and the linux drivers: Linux Drivers
Good AnalogyGuy
They have labels printers that print labels all the time.
I've used a variety of printer types (Intermec, Zebra, Datamax) and they all have worked using plain text drivers. You can hook them up via serial/parallel/IP and just output text to the correct port and you can print labels. Print whatever you want. Printer format (i.e. printer commands) varies by manufacturer, so you'll have to program the correct formats. But after learning the printer language everything is trivial.
IT's old tech, but, Panasonic and Okidata still have dot matrix printers out there. The advantage is that you could put a bunch of labels on a roll and let them rip just by sending ASCII out to the serial or parallel port.
This is my sig.
I've found that HP makes very linux friendly printers. Every HP printer/scanner I've setup with CUPS automatically worked as soon as it was plugged in. Though you might not want any Greenpeace people to see you buying it :-P
As several people have already mentioned, Zebra printers are excellent, particularly if you plan on generating your own output (as noted above). While not Linux, we currently generate our own output from an iSeries for various label media across several different zebra printer models.
Their reliablity and operation is rock solid and hassle free (just ensure you select a printer that is best suited for the media you are using). The ZPL programming reference guide that they make available I found to be quite comprehensive and fairly easy to understand.
Ultimately there may be another printer more suited to the task you are doing but my experience with Zebra Printers has been a positive one.
Um, the guy is NOT asking for a laser printer. I'm sure he already has a laser printer and was using a label printer cause lasers suck at label printing tasks. Label printers operate quite different. Manually feeding and re-feeding and re re re re re re re re re re feeding a sheet in a laser printer, modifying the print settings for each label is NOT the answer! Don't forget the 4 hours of labor with the printer torn apart trying to get loose labels off the inside of the printer, and the costs of replacement drums you have destroyed. A laser printer for *most* common label printing tasks is using the "hammer to drive in a screw" approach.
Keep in mind that label printer label stock comes in a lot more options than laser printer label stock. Some are variable length where you can print something really short or a foot long depending on the label needed. Some have special adhesive, some are laminated. Some are thermal paper where others are thermal transfer.
The solution is a unix friendly commercial unit. What makes them unix friendly? Simple: you can get programming docs for them. Zebra's are nice and you can even print by sending XML to it. Rather than trying to get a CUPS driver, which is pretty silly for labels, you put the "driver" in the application. The thing is, printing lots of labels just isn't something traditional apps (open office) are good at (outside of the traditional "print 400 copies of the same label" or "mailmerge"). You are much better off with a quick and dirty (web?) app that sends the right formatting commands directly to the printer. You can certainly get a cups driver for many many label printers, it's just not the best thing for cups to be in the middle between the app and the printer in most label printing cases that I have run across (years ago, I worked with industrial label printers.)
Unfortunately, it is IMPOSSIBLE for any of us to answer the question because we only have the "I need a computer that uses electricity" level of detail. What exactly does he need the labels for? Shipping boxes? Equipment tags? Wires? File folders? e-stamps? Can't recommend anything without knowing how it's going to be used.
I remember there being a nice Seiko label printer driver for OS/2 and there might have been other label printer drivers. I know they won't be current but it would be a good start where there is nothing today. I used to print to the Seiko from Star Office using that label printer driver.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I was not trying to say the submitter should use a laser printer. I was only saying that it is not true that a label sheet can only be fed once. If a printer will take a label sheet at all, it will take it twice (once from each end). There are plenty of other reasons to run a dedicated label printer, but I wanted to shoot down this particular one.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
You could just get a dedicated inkjet printer loaded only with label sheets of your choice and use that with a program like glabels. Standard A3130 (?) sheets can be found dirt cheap in bulk and I've had good success loading 25 sheets at a time into a low end HP inkjet printer.
I've got countless Zebra printers in horrible industrial environments. They run and run and run and run and run
Well, short of a little bunny banging a drum, you get the idea.
I second Zebra. I have been using a Zebra 2844 for the past few years, works great. In a previous job they were also used heavily in a warehouse, with few complaints. You can get them for less than $100 on ebay. Just beware that you purchase the one with the USB cable, not the older model parallel cable.
It is in most corporate environments. I can bring any hardware I want to work (I love my ergonomic keyboard), as long as it works in Windows XP out of the box. No driver downloads/installs allowed.
I have absolutely never, ever had a keyboard or mouse not work under Linux with zero configuration.
Ever.
If you have a keyboard and/or mouse that doesn't work, it's because it does not work. By that I mean a hardware malfunction.
I've gone through a few wireless keyboard/mouse sets, wired usb, wired ps/2, serial, etc.
Bluetooth will require the Bluez Linux Bluetooth stack and a little bit of configuration.
We use Zebra ZM400. We print thousands and thousands of labels daily. The zm400 printers are on an network of about 100 Ubuntu desktops and we have 12 of these printers. They are supported "by default" that is in the kernel. In ubuntu they show a graphical interface with which you can change all manner of settings. The printers are rugged and can print very fast. (as a minor aside: In the newer Ubuntu versions they print slower though. Not sure if its cups or the driver or something else. so in some workstations that print a lot we keep the older distro.) We used Sato before but they never supported linux even when we asked them. Everything you need to design the labels is also included with Ubuntu such as glabels, kbarcode, and above all openoffice draw (which combined with kbarcode for the barcodes makes very portable very easy ver powerful designs) we also use some smaller zebra printers for fedex labels, also supported in ubuntu (and linux in general. zebra makes many other models as well and I imagine they are supported but I cant say. this is what we use. hope it helps. Because not everybody's needs are the same I guess I should elaborate a little on how we use them. we print in rolls of 1000 4x6 labels and 4x3 inches mostly. we print about 200,000 labels a day. a couple of those printers are just in use all day, the rest print sporadically, 3 thousand here, three thousand there. You can also find these in ebay (and other similar ones) Good luck with your project. . .
Admittedly low tech but the tractor feed labels used to be much cheaper than specific label maker stock. Also 9 pin dot matrix printers can take all kinds of abuse and keep on working.
I have a Brother 845CW. It's great that it provided linux drivers, but they are ghostscript based, and if I want to print a photo, it actually takes less time to reboot into windows . . .
Even printing text causes long pauses before the first page, and more before each additional page.
Install Windows bitch! Fuck faggot Linux.
We are using the GX420d model from Zebra. You can order these with Parallel port, Ethernet, Wi-Fi or BlueTooth and they also have a USB port. I've used them from OS X and Linux without any problems. There are drivers for the thing, but you can even print using HTTP, POP3 (!) or connect to the printer over TCP and send your raw commands through that. It took me about a day to figure out how they work, but the printer language is quite easy to understand. Documentation is well done, but getting access to the docs is not so easy. The Zebra tech support is quite helpful though, so you can always ask them.
And if you want them to continue running, you'll have to clean the print head from time to time.
We've been using Dymo LabelWriters (both 300 and 400 series) under Windows and Linux for printing oil sample labels for quite some time now. Even in a workshop environment they seem quite reliable. I'm not a big fan of the printer drivers under Windows (they're prone to causing exceptions in .NET land for random reasons), but the CUPS drivers under Linux seem fine.
and label your porn dvd's by hand
Is there really any need for that sort of Microsoft bashing?
Yes. Bringing some balance to a multi billion dollar marketing machine.
For one thing, as the asshole and zealot you clearly are, your knowledge and concept of Windows is stuck 8+ years in the past.
That covers the current state of the art, then. XP was released in 2001.
I have seen people say it before, but if you buy a more serious barcode printer than a Dymo thermo printer; like an Intermec, Zebra or Monarch they support (their own flavour) of an ascii based printing language. The downside is lock-in. once you got it working for intermac's (IPL) it probably will not run directly on Zebra's (ZPL). These printers are made to Always work, and in general kan handle quite a lot of physical abuse. You can most of the time put in special labels or ink transfers to make the label work in the crasiest of circumstances. These printers most of the time support stuff like Maxicode, PDF417 or Qcode becides some easier codes as Code128 and 3of9. The advanced ones let you even 'print' RFID's Spoolfiles tend to be extreemly small (like 200-400bytes for a label without an image, packed with barcodes) The downside is that you will not get a nice looking GUI, and that creating a label is like creating a dialog in Clipper. (does my age show ?)
The InfoPrint 6700 thermal printer supports the industry standard Epson FX and IBM ProPrinter XL III emulations, which are supported under all OS's (including Linux)
(it also emulates Zebra/Datamax/Intermec/Sato printers so can be dropped into existing environments where labels are already designed using these proprietary languages)
Good Luck.
Damned linux tards.
There is a useful summary page here on how to get it working.
We use linux for all our mountain bike parts operations by the way.
...banner and lpr?
Zebra is my first choice. Never have to mess with them and they just work day in and day out. Datamax is alright, had some issue's with them, but still trouble free for the most part. I would go with the Zebra SL105 I think it is, they rock.
Now the (few & relatively minor) downsides. I cannot comment on their Linux driver support. We use Windows Seagull drivers to host ours
Translation: I completely ignored your question and simply expounded about something I like with no relevance at all to your inquiry regarding good solutions for Linux. But don't let that get in the way of me influencing your decision, despite tossing my two cents worth in about something I'm admittadly unqualified to comment on.
Maybe I should be more patient with this sort of nonsense, but I just got out of a two hour meeting that could have been concluded in 15 minutes were it not for some bozo engaging in exactly this kind of "I have no idea about the topic at hand but I know a fair amount about, and have strong opinions on, this other topic that has no relevance to what we're trying to accomplish here, so allow me to expound on that until your ears go numb or your brains melt, whichever comes first."
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Ok, I work for Star so I'm biased but if direct thermal printing suits your requirements then I highly recommend the TSP828L. It's a quick, robust, versatile label printer and we provide a lot of support for Linux. We have supported CUPS drivers, JavaPOS, C based comms/status API (with a Java wrapper) and pretty good Linux support if you need it.
The printers from Zebra are very good. You can use the desktop TLP2844 printer for almost any industrial application as well. Printing from Linux might work through CUPS somehow, but the printer language (EPL) is quite easy and depending on your requirements it might be worth writing a small app. You can take a look at this application which writes labels (barcodes and corresponding numbers on small lables, source code available): http://www.emilda.org/index.php?q=emilda-print
your local lowes, and see which label printer they use. lowes store terminals are all linux.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The thing is, printing lots of labels just isn't something traditional apps (open office) are good at (outside of the traditional "print 400 copies of the same label" or "mailmerge"). You are much better off with a quick and dirty (web?) app that sends the right formatting commands directly to the printer.
That is why you use glables instead.
There are cheap ($200) devices to do that and save the trouble. Smart people tend to prefer not wasting time on useless crap.
plug it into your Linux box, and program it to dial in your labels onto a dymo handheld labelling machine.
Makes about as much sense as your "advice."
(Learn .Net to print labels? You've gotta be fucking kidding)
I have set up a printing system for my company that prints labels automatically when they check something into inventory. using both Zebra Based Brady 300 MVP+ and a DataMax I series. Both of these will work with CUPS, However the DataMax's driver is Not standard with cups. I would Recomend the Datamax over the brady. 6the driver is dead simple to install. Zebra Printers in General work well with cups, I guess it depends on the size of the labels you are printing.
We have always used intermec 3400 series printers. We print about a thousand labels a day to these printers via a txt file printed through cups and we very (and I mean like 1-2 times a year) have an issue with the 12 that we have in house.
It may just be a lot less expensive to find a printing company to do the run for you. There is a massive difference between your strongest office printer and a digital press.
When I ran it this morning, it brought up more useful information.
Well, on the third page, I found this link to a pdf on the manufacturer's site. It has live links, and nosing around the manufacturer's site might dig up more information.
(I have work tomorrow, got to go to bed, so I'll beg off nosing around, leave it to others.)
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_esp.html
Brother offers Linux CUPS and lprd drivers for every single printer I've seen them offer.
Brother has the QL-570 with a USB connection and a Linux driver. They also have the QL-580N if you want a networked label printer.
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
I've used a few of these these printers and programmed them using ascii commands. The models I used were also very reliable. They all come with great documentation that you can download before buying. http://www.intermec.ca/products/printers_media/fixed/index.aspx
I've been happy using my old HP OfficeJet printers under Ubuntu with HPLIP. It is nice to see a mainstream vendor actually support their hardware under Linux. I had thinking of ditching HP for Canon until this. I've been using it more for bulk scanning with the automatic document feeder that industrial printing, but I thought it was worth mentioning.
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HP Linux Imaging and Printing
Print, Scan and Fax Drivers for Linux
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html
You are obviously not following the thread. I am claiming that more hardware works in linux out of the box. The other poster is claiming that more hardware works in Windows after installing drivers. Both are true, so we have started arguing which case is more relevant.
On a related note... I currently launch a copy of Windows running on an old laptop or even from VMware or VirtualBox to drive my cheap USB multifunction printer device from Linux. The drawback is that I have to print to ps or pdf files first and transfer them to the Windows box for printing, rather than printing directly.
Is there a way to turn that setup into a network postscript printer that can be printed to directly from *NIX? The regular Windows printer sharing still relies on the clients having the lousy Win32 printer drivers. There must be some software that you can run on a Windows box that can print to its printer using the proprietary drivers, but make the setup look like a normal postscript printer to the rest of the network. Google searches have turned up nothing promising :/
The Cat dealership I worked in last year used the Zebra thermal label printer line for their warehousing needs, and that worked quite well. I had written some basic printing routines which ran from a combination of PHP and PERL modules run from Apache on an old copy of linux. If I remember correctly, the printers were capable of network printing.
I third? Zebra. I work in a manufacturing plant where we have ~30 Zebras, mostly 90Xiii, working with Oracle running on Linux. Very solid unless you have to print vertically oriented barcodes.
Open Printing is your friend,
http://www.openprinting.org/printer_list.cgi?make=Dymo
Salut,
Jacques
I disagree about CUPS. I use CUPS for my Zebra LP2844 USB, and it works great. I can unplug and replug the printer (I move it between two computers) and it just works seamlessly. CUPS isn't a problem; it just provides the print queue. But it just sends the printer whatever you send to it. I send the printer custom EPL-coded text files (my printer doesn't support ZPL), and CUPS just passes them through.
So use CUPS; it already has a driver built-in for Zebra printers. It's not much of a "driver", as it's just passing the data straight through. But what CUPS does is make it easy to set up the printer with a regular print queue just like any other printer, even if you have it unplugged at the moment. Then you just print to it using the "lpr" command to send it an E/ZPL-formatted text file.
pdk,
Zebra brand printers work great for barcode labels and take special command sequences that don't require any special drivers because they support "raw" printing. Depending on the type of label you are trying to print (thermal, etc) this might be worth looking into. Instead of printing an image or document created with third party software (word, open office, paint application, etc), you write an application to send "printer commands" straight to the printer, and it can draw text, pictures, barcodes, all programatically. Perhaps the case for other printers too, but if you find one that does, it's fairly simple to print to using a generic/text driver, you just need to send the commands directly to the device bypassing the print driver by printing in "raw" mode. This can be done in many programming languages.
The downside of course is that you won't have a WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) editor, but for commercial type printing, it works great. They can even print images and shapes given the proper data format with no proprietary driver installed.
Here's a GPL Java API I've started to do this programatically (work for web pages or stand-alone java applications):
http://code.google.com/p/jzebra/
This API has been tested with Zebra brand (and legacy Eltron) type printers working in both Ubuntu and Windows with both Firefox and Internet Explorer, locally attached and network attached.
Feel free to contact me from the google code link above.
-Tres
Casio made several label printers, for which PEGG was written. I have used it successfully with the KL-P1000 "mouse pad" printer. You will probably have to buy it used though... I think they are out of production. Also the Casio labels are annoyingly hard to peel from the backing paper. Most others (e.g. Brother, Brady) are much better in that regard.
You can really print via CUPS, but it's kindof a kludge. My favorite way so far was perl CGI -> postscript -> convert to pgm -> convert to casio raw format -> send via USB to the printer. I had a web form for each type of label I was interested in printing, and the perl CGI substitutes fields into a postscript template. (CUPS doesn't have to be involved, the printer just has to be connected via USB to the web server.)
(Disclaimer: I'm the current maintainer but I didn't write it, and haven't done any actual maintenance yet, other than writing the CGI/Postscript stuff. :-)
I have used a Dymo label printer before with success. CUPS actually has specific models available in its configs. http://global.dymo.com/enUS/Categories/LabelWriter_Printers.html. Check the drivers supplied with CUPS.
Installing a driver is, quite often, "a problem".
Absolutely. We've still got hardware that comes with a Windows driver disk with a day-glo sticker on it saying "install me first" and a piece of hardware with a little cap on its USB port secured by another day-glo sticker telling you to find that CD before plugging in the device. Case in point, I got two identical web cams, one for my Mom, one for me. She thought it'd be nice if she could see her granddaughter in-between my occasional trips upstairs^B^B^B^B^B^B^B^Bback home. Mine plugs into Ubuntu machine and works out of the box. Hers requires a call to the neighborhood computer guy to insert the disk, run the setup, and get the hardware installed configured. Kinda backwards, seeing as Windows is for average people and Linux is for geeks, right?
And let's not forget that with windows driver installs, you have to make sure not to click (or forget to unclick) the various crapware that comes with the driver. Because sometimes that crapware does more than just waste some disk space and poop out stupid icons on the desktop.
But back to the overall topic. One could do worse than to visit Amazon or Newegg or another retailer that has detailed user reviews and check out printers (or other hardware) to find out if anyone else has had good results with Linux. Alternatively, perhaps a stand-alone label printer with its own keyboard and LCD would also work -- some are pretty sophisticated in terms of fonts available, barcodes and file storage.
I am not a crackpot.
Zebra LP2844s seem to get everywhere. I have a dedicated one just for me on my desk at work, as does my colleague next to me. They work perfectly every time with no hassle, ever. Lovely piece of kit.
The other printer I have on my desk is an Oki dot-matrix printer, which is used for triplicate carbon-type labels. It jams several times a day and loses alignment occasionally. I've also killed two of them in the last six months. Not such a great tool.
Which isn't exactly an unreasonable requirement.
HP printers are pretty good. Stuff just works. But I still wouldn't just buy anything without checking openprinting.org database. HP has driver advantage here, I think.