So out-of-the-box Solus will now detect that my particular Brother model as a network printer and the PPD exchange (or whatever protocol they use) lets me use almost everything on it.
The scanner works as well with the brsane package in Solus. In a fresh install with the solus package (nothing manually installed as per my reddit post) I simply had to run:
brsaneconfig4 -a name=br_j680dw model="MFC-J680DW" ip=<ip_address_of_printer>
This got the scanner working as well, except for the "press button to scan" feature. That you MUST install from Brother as Solus seems to have no package.
So right now, I am using 100% Solus repo software, nothing manually installed from Brother.
Definitely give this a try: if your printer is being automatically detected and running Solus' brsaneconfig4 to add it works for you, then you really don't need anything else.
