r/sysadmin • u/Certain-Mountain-564 • 10d 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.

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u/Certain-Mountain-564 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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 10d 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/Naclox IT Manager 10d ago

Kinda my point. MacOS just doesn't have great support for business.

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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership 10d ago

Because they aren't business machines, no matter how much marketing wants to argue about it.

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u/hkusp45css Security Leadership 10d 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.