[cups] Setting up a brother that can do duplex, to make it do duplex?

[Jerry]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2016 18:08:44 -0400, Gene Heskett stated:

>Greetings; 
>
>Asking here because its a PITA to try and talk to Brother, they know
>zip about linux or cups. Folks here are generally quite knowledgeable,
>and I appreciate it.
>
>If I want to use this printers 11x17 print mode, I found I had to
>setup a profile just for 11x17 paper.  Thats understandable. Feeding
>the paper straight in is a PIMA, but thats the rules of this game.
>
>But for normal printing, it seems as if I ought to be able to select
>the tray of paper to use, and whether or not I can want duplex, with
>either tray, or even paper orientation vs image on the paper.  Or
>paper weight.
>
>But I can't, so I gave up and just let it use tray 1 full of heavy, 
>glossy on both sides, photo paper for a 50 page B&W text job.  Then it 
>came out wrong side up and to put it in page order, I had to turn a 50 
>page, nearly a pound of paper over one page at a time. Not to mention 
>that each page laid on the stack, must be held there for a couple 
>seconds to keep it from floating off the table, which is level.
>
>I am beginning to think I am going to have to add 3 or 4 more
>"Printers", each one configured to do just a single style of job.
>
>Is this the usual procedure, or are the brother drivers being super 
>pickity about what they deign to do?
>
>Thanks everybody.
>
>Cheers, Gene Heskett


I have two Brothers printers, both laser jets, and they work reasonably
well. Not as well as they do under Windows, but I am on a FreeBSD
machine and Brother does not make drivers for FreeBSD.

Brother does make drivers for Linux,
http://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/index.html?c=us_ot&lang=en&comple=on&redirect=on

You did not mention what model printer you have. In my case, they did
not have a specific PPD file for my printer, so I copied the PPD file
that came with the Brother printer. It was supposed to work under
Windows; however, it worked fine under CUPS.

You should probably check out this page too:
http://support.brother.com/g/s/id/linux/en/evaluation.html?c=us_ot&lang=en&redirect=on

-- 
Jerry