My work place is a Microsoft shop through and through, so all their stuff is based in Azure, Active Directory, Outlook, O365 and Citrix. And they provide my with a Windows laptop for work, which is really great.
The only issue I have with it, is the Windows part. So I took it upon myself to see if I can use a Linux install for work in a Windows environment. So I took my already installed private Linux laptop to work and it seemed to be going alright, expect that it’s an old laptop at this point, so the GPU was not good enough to run the screens and the Bluetooth version was to old for the peripherals.
So this weekend I took the plunge. I cloned the Windows drive with CloneZilla (in case of emergency, you know) and installed Arch Linux on my work laptop as the only OS.
And so far, everything has worked. Except for 1 small detail that I totally forgot about! Printing. Specifically label printing, as we do ship some stuff around the country. The printer in question is a Zebra label printer G420-something and is set up on the internet Windows network at work.
I’ve been at work all day and I haven’t been able to setup this printer at all.
This is mostly a rant and acknowledgement that running Linux in a Windows work environment is possible, but it’s also a small whimper for help to see if anyone has managed to be able to connect to a network Windows printer.
I’ve setup a default Samba and Avahi system, but it won’t “probe” for the printer. I don’t know the exact name/hostname/IP of the printer either.
Do the Windows clients connect without any additional software? Or do they need Zebra drivers of some sort? The website for the GK420D makes it sound like they would need something.
Maybe this will help?
I know it’s Mac, but it’s still cups underneath.
I see you chatting about this over in Matrix, but chats are always a little difficult to parse with things like these.
The windows clients also require specific drivers for this printer.
But I got it to work with the cups drivers. I found the IP of the printer, installed
ghostscript(for some reason it’s not a dependency of the printing system) and I can now print from that. Thanks for help and suggestions.You’re welcome.
Ghostscript has had quite a few bad days when it comes to security, so I wonder if that is a reason it’s not included by default. A bit annoying regardless.
Glad you’re all set up! And good to hear you can use Linux at work.
Shameless plug for the blog post I wrote about this:
https://blog.strits.dk/using-linux-in-a-microsoft-based-business/
A little update on this topic.
3 months. That’s how long the system was running without anyone noticing. Sadly, the company security team noticed that my laptop tried to connect to a tor node, which is not allowed according to company policies, and I was asked to re-install my laptop since I had no idea what on my machine did it. If I am to be connected to their intranet, it needs to be a windows box, so they can see what is doing what on their network. Which is fine. I get that. If I want to keep running Linux I can use their guest wifi network, which they don’t care about at all. The problem is, the printer mentioned in the OP is on the intranet and only reachable on that.
So until there’s a way to reach that printer without being on the intranet, I am forced to run Windows.
The company is working towards NIS2 compliance, which means the device has to run Microsoft Intune/Company portal and the Defender Endpoint. Which is possible on Linux, but they have no Intune policies for Linux yet, so that has to wait for that too.
