Five months exploring open source software and communities without progress

[PenelopeSM]

I've been running a small print-on-demand shop out of my garage for about 18 months now, and I'm trying to piece together a proper workflow without throwing money at SaaS subscriptions I can't justify. My setup is messy — Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on a repurposed Dell OptiPlex 7060 (i5-8500T, 16GB DDR4, 256GB NVMe boot drive plus a 4TB Seagate Barracuda for storage), and I've got a Canon imageRUNNER 1435i that I scored used for $200. The printer speaks PCL6 and PostScript 3, but the drivers are a nightmare on Linux. I got it half-working with Gutenprint 5.3.4 and CUPS 2.4.2, but duplex printing either ignores my settings or throws a "printer-stopped" error every third job. For invoicing and inventory, I tried Odoo Community Edition 17.0 — installed it via Docker on the same machine with PostgreSQL 15, and it ran okay for about two weeks until the web interface started hanging on the inventory module. I traced the logs and it's some kind of worker timeout, but I'm not sure if that's a Docker resource allocation issue or Odoo being bloated for what I need. I've also been messing with InvoiceNinja 5.8.2 as a lighter alternative, but the self-hosted setup requires PHP 8.1 and I'm stuck on 8.0 because of some legacy packages I can't drop. I know I'm overcomplicating this, but every time I search for "small business open source stack" I get either decade-old articles recommending OpenOffice or hype pieces about ERPNext that read like they were written by someone who's never actually run a business. So my actual question is: has anyone here successfully run a print shop workflow — simple invoices, batch PDF processing for labels, and reliable printer management — on a single Linux box using stuff that's actively maintained and doesn't require a database admin certification to set up? I don't need CRM or HR or any of that. Just three functions that work without me having to restart services every morning.

[ThomasG]

Have you considered switching to a different printer driver? There are also open-source alternatives like TurboPrint that might handle your Canon better. It worked for me when I faced similar issues with duplex printing.

[ThomasW]

Odoo can be pretty heavy. Have you looked into simpler tools like Dolibarr? It has the basics without the bloat. My friend used it for a similar business and found it much lighter on resources.

[Andrew70]

For invoicing, maybe check out InvoicePlane. It's a bit simpler than InvoiceNinja and doesn't have those strict PHP requirements. I've used it without issues on my Ubuntu setup.

[James.M]

Honestly, maintaining a reliable setup with those tools can be a headache. If you lean towards something simpler, I would recommend GnuCash for basic invoicing, although it doesn't do batch processing. It's been a lifesaver for small operations like mine.