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OpenPrinting Printers Brother HL-2140

Brother HL-2140
	Black & White laser printer, max. 1200x1200 dpi, works Mostly
	Recommended Driver: hpijs-pcl5e (Home page, View PPD, directly download PPD)
	Generic Instructions: CUPS, no spooler

Miscellaneous

Printer supports PJL.
Printer supports direct text printing with the 'us-ascii' charset.

Comments

Brother publishes proprietary Linux drivers for CUPS and LPD for most of their laser printers and multi-function devices, including SANE drivers for the scanners. They can be downloaded free of charge on their Linux driver page.

Some comments of a user's experience:

Date : 09-03-2008 I am using Kubuntu 8.04.1 LTS. The printer was Auto-Detected. I have not had to manually install any drivers. The driver automatically being used is "Brother HL-2060 Foomatic/HL1250". Prints clean at 300dpi. Prints very good at 600dpi. I tried to print at 1200x600dpi. It gave me blank pages. Excellent TEXT printer. Okay Graphical Printer. I believe that if we can figure out a way to print at higher resolution, graphical printing quality may improve!

Date : September 28th, 2008 Works with Ubuntu 8.04 with full support (even 1200x600 dpi). For having this working properly, first install the LPR driver found here http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/lpr_drivers.html. Then create a directory for the PPD file with

sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model

Then install the CUPS driver wrapper found here http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/linux/cups_drivers.html with dpkg.

After that, CUPS enables to set power savings and correct 1200 dpi resolution. Enjoy!

Date: November 9, 2008 I use CentOS 5.2, and I was not able to find a straight linux printer driver on the noted web page. However, on the CUPS driver page, there were links to the CUPS driver and the CUPS wrapper driver pages, both of which downloaded in .rpm format and installed perfectly and worked right away.

Date: January 04, 2009 I use Mandriva 2008 Spring and Mandriva 2009. Using the above links I found the RPM drivers AND wrappeers and they both installed fine. I then plugged in the printer via USB and it was auto-detected and works amazingly well.

Again, Mandriva just seems to "work" in most cases, no "mkdir blah", or "chmod this file", or even "sudo run this or that command"... just install both rpm's and autdo-detect... DONE!

08 Feb 2009 Kubuntu 8.10 - The printer was recognized automatically as "HL2140-0series" and printing would cause data to be sent to printer (its blue light blinked) but nothing printed. Downloaded lpr and cups .deb packages from Brother (use "search" on their Web site, Linux drivers are not linked from the printer downloads page.) Follow Brother's instructions carefully before installing the DEB package; you have to manually create one directory ("sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model"). When it is working the printer shows up as "HL2140" instead of "HL2140-series".

26 Feb 2009 I want to re-enforce the previous note someone else made.
1) Plug in the printer to the computer. Ignore all the prompts, hit cancel, etc.
2) Download the LPR and CUPS deb files from this link (or search for them on the site): http://solutions.brother.com/linux/en_us/download_prn.html#HL-2140
3) sudo mkdir /usr/share/cups/model
4) sudo dpkg -i --force-all --force-architecture [the two debs you downloaded]
THE FORCE SWITCHES ARE VITAL FOR 64 BIT MACHINES!
5)Profit. The printer should work and show up as "HL2140".

Consumables/Refills: TN330 or TN360 toner, DR360 drum

Drivers

The following driver(s) are known to drive this printer:

Recommended driver:

Other drivers: