The Brother HL-1110 is supported on GNU/Linux and BSD by the brlaser CUPS driver created, and maintained at time of writing, by Peter De Watcher. On Debian 10.6, the driver is installed by default but the required Printer Description (ppd) files are not included. These ppd files must be manually generated and installed.

Documents that are mostly text and line drawings in simple page layouts are adequately handled by brlaser at full speed. On the other hand, due to memory limitations, jobs exceeding around 800KiB may not finish successfully. The driver does not work around this limitation. Both 300DPI and 600DPI resolution modes have been verified to work.

This method does not require build tools to be installed. Only CUPS, along with the PPD compiler command ppdc and the brlaser driver are needed on the host system.

1. Download the PPD source file brlaser.drv.in from De Watcher's GitHub repository: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pdewacht/brlaser/master/brlaser.drv.in, and take note of the directory it was saved to.
2. Navigate to the directory where the copy of brlaser.drv.in was saved.
3. While in the same directory as the brlaser.drv.in file, compile the ppd's with this command:

   ppdc -v brlaser.drv.in

Several dozen files with names ending like *.ppd will be generated and saved to a sub-directory named ppd. Navigate into that directory and remain there for the rest of the installation process.
4. Find the URI of the device using the lpinfo command:

   /usr/sbin/lpinfo -v

   A list of names and/or URIs should appear. Watch out for something that looks like this:

   direct usb://Brother/HL-1110%20series?serial=DEADBEEF

5. Install the printer in CUPS with the following command, with root privileges:

   /usr/sbin/lpadmin -p 'Brother_HL1110' -v usb://Brother/HL-1110%20series?serial=DEADBEEF \
    -P br1110.ppd -L 'Your room' -E
   
   # Replace the serial number DEADBEEF with the number of your device,
   # and replace or omit the optional location specified by the -L option
   # as appropriate.
   

   If a desktop environment is in use, the DE's control panel can also be used instead. The CUPS control panel (accessible from the host system at http://localhost:631 by default with a web browser) is yet another way to install the printer.

The instructions above are for stock Debian systems. On some systems, the /usr/sbin part from the command may be omitted as appropriate.

If brlaser is not installed on your system and no binaries have been made publicly available for your distribution, the driver must be built from scratch. In this case, follow the build instructions at the brlaser GitHub repository. Build tools and related packages will be required.

To maximise the success rate of a print job, try to keep the print job under 800KiB by minimising the complexity of the page layouts.

Use raster images and gradient fills sparingly; these elements can increase the size of the print job.

Please avoid using the 1200HQ option as it currently does not work.

The HL-1110 has only 1MB of memory, and some of it is used up by the device's firmware during normal operation.

The HL-1110 has a native print resolution of 600x600 DPI.

This printer implements a subset of PCL-5. While it responds to PJL commands, all printed content must be sent as a run-length encoded (RLE) raster. The encoding format is described in detail in the Brother Printer Technical Reference Guide (Chapter 2, Part 6.3). The compression is most effective when there are many contiguous regions of black or white on the page.

• 4-1, on Debian buster (10.6). The driver is preinstalled in Debian 10.6 under the printer-driver-brlaser package.
• 6, on GNU Guix (1.4.0-16) from the brlaser package

HL-1110 has a white and black case, HL-1112 has its colors reversed and is mainly black. "A" variant, marked as such on the box only, comes with a completely filled original cartridge. HL-1118 is a 1110 for the Chinese market, the differences if any aren't known.

brlaser GitHub repository. https://github.com/pdewacht/brlaser

Brother Printer Technical Reference Guide. Version AC. https://download.brother.com/welcome/doc002907/Tech_Manual_AC.pdf

Support and Downloads | HL-1110. Brother Industries. https://support.brother.com/g/b/producttop.aspx?c=eu_ot&lang=en&prod=hl1110_us_eu_as