Comment on [Louis Rossmann] Brother turns heel & becomes anti-consumer printer company
tal@lemmy.today 1 month agoStrictly-speaking, in this case, it’s not the ability to be network-connected that’s at issue, but rather the ability to push updates to firmware.
I don’t know what type of computer you have it connected to, but Linux has a system that will automatically update firmware on attached devices if the attached Linux computer is Internet-connected.
$ sudo fwupdtool get-devices
Will show you a list of managed devices.
I’m sure that Windows and MacOS have comparable schemes.
On Linux, I’m sure that you can blacklist a device for updates.
I’d guess that it’s possible to get one of those dedicated USB print servers. Those probably don’t support updating firmware on an attached printer. I might have some questions as to how much I’d trust a no-name one of those on my network itself, but…
harsh3466@lemmy.ml 1 month ago
Shit. I didn’t even think of that. I’m using fedora. Tomorrow I’ll be blocking firmware updates for the printer. Thank you for pointing that out.
tal@lemmy.today 1 month ago
I should qualify that – I don’t know for sure whether and which distros enable updates to run non-interactively.
fwupdhas the ability to do so and it’s billed as doing so on its github page, but that doesn’t mean that a distro has to actually take advantage of that. Could be that in a default configuration, it only updates stuff next time you invoke it.