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.