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Table of Contents
Printing
Choosing A Printer
Linux hasn't always had a great history with printers. For many years, printing was a black art to many Linux users, and very few printers worked reliably. Today, most printers will work well with Linux, but some still do not. If you're purchasing a new printer, be aware that many of the cheap inkjet models aren't as well supported in Linux as more expensive laser printers. If you're unsure about a printer, you can check online to see if others have had success with it.
All these warnings are perhaps a bit overkill though, as the large majority of printers work with Linux after only a brief and simple setup. The progress in this direction is largely due to the efforts of the Common UNIX Printing System, (CUPS). CUPS is a printing system used by Slackware and most other Linux distributions today. It primarily uses a graphical setup procedure accessed via a web browser. In order to setup a printer with CUPS, you'll need to open a web browser such as firefox, konqueror, or links and go to http://localhost:631.
You might find that a quick click-through of CUPS configures your printer nearly automatically. Or, you may find that further configuration is required. To learn more about how printing works or how to get a stubborn printer configured, read on.
Getting the driver
There are, essentially, three types of printer drivers:
- Postscript printers use the unversal-ish language of Postscript to communicate with computers. A driver for postscript printers is usually not needed, since a postscript-compatible subsystem called Ghostscript is already installed.
- Gutenprint are drivers engineered by GNU Linux developers. It provides support for roughly 700 printers.
- Manufacturers may provide Linux drivers for their printers. Find out by going to the manufacturer's driver and support website and searching for your model.
Since gutenprint is already installed on Slackware, from this set of three categories, we have two methods of installing drivers:
- Ordered List ItemFor the manufacturer's drivers, installation is usually the same as any other software on your system; use installpkg or rpm2tgz to install the driver package. Be sure to read the documentation bundled with the drivers.
- For Postscript printers, there is no “installation” as such; simply download the appropriate
PPD
file and keep it in a sensible location on your hard drive.
Once you've located and installed or downloaded the necessary components, you're ready to run CUPS.
Setting Up a Printer in CUPS
Printing from the Command Line
Formatting for Print
Chapter Navigation
Previous Chapter: The X Window System
Next Chapter: Users and Groups
Sources
* Original source: http://www.slackbook.org/beta
* Originally written by Alan Hicks, Chris Lumens, David Cantrell, Logan Johnson