My elderly neighbor who is an accomplished engineer and has been using Linux for ages recently upgraded his distro. I think he is using Ubuntu or Fedora. Now whenever he prints pages every line of text has a line through it.

He has been able to verify that it is not his printer. He has tried a Live CD as well and is having the same issue. When he goes back to the old version things print fine.

He surmises it is some sort of diagnostic feature in CUPS or some other part of the printing subsystem that is improperly turned on by default.

Has anyone seen this before? I am not a Linux expert, but I would like to help him out.

  • @[email protected]
    22•9 months ago

    I had this when it was using a cups generic driver on a cannon I think printer. Switching to the manufacturers drivers fixed the issue.

    • @morph3ousOP
      11•9 months ago

      Thanks. I’ll let him know. I think he has either a Canon or Lexmark.

  • Onee Chan~🌸English
    10•9 months ago

    I had the same problem, the end result will be like talisman or cursed text.

    I fixed the problem by switching from generic printer driver to the property one (unfortunately I had to install it from their site by downloading it using the browser like a windows scrub 🤢).

    My printer is a old HP printer and distro is fedroa 38 (gnome)

    Hope this helps ❤️

    • glibg10b
      3•9 months ago

      property

      That’s an interesting way to spell proprietary

  • @[email protected]
    10•9 months ago

    Others are saying to switch to the specific driver for your printer. If you do not want to go proprietary you could try and see if your printer is supported by the splix driver

    • @morph3ousOP
      2•9 months ago

      Thanks. I gave him this suggestion and the one from others about using the manufacturer’s proprietary drivers.

      • @[email protected]
        1•9 months ago

        Also depending on the architecture on the computer, this might be the only possible solution. I have a samsung m2020 series printer connected to a Pi to share it on the local network. Samsung Unified Driver does not work on armhf as it is only compiled for x86/x64, but splix can be compiled on armhf and it actually supports my printer

  • @[email protected]
    5•9 months ago

    I have mostly avoided printers whenever possible, but I did find an old thread from 2010 that discusses a similar issue: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=44034

    While that is not a huge help for you, it may corroborate the assumption that it’s a software issue.

    My generic knowledge is that printer drivers have always been somewhat interchangeable. You may be able to try generic drivers at random to see if that helps. Dunno.