Thursday, November 19, 2009

Ubuntu - Adding a New Printer

One amazing feature of Ubuntu is its ability to automatically detect printers connected via USB cables, parallel cables, and even serial cables. If you have one of these printers, you most likely don’t need to add it to the system. You should already see an icon appear under the Printers window. Just move on to the next section to configure it. If you are not fortunate enough to have your printer automatically detected, you’ll have to manually add it. Here are the steps for doing that:

1. Click the New button on the toolbar. The New Printer wizard appears and lists your printer options. Before the New Printer wizard appears, the Printer Configuration tool scans your workstation and the local network for any accessible printers. If it detects any, they’re added to the top of the connection list.

2. Select the connection type of the new printer. Although the printer is defined as a local printer on your workstation, this utility also allows you to configure six types of printer connections (besides the currently connected printers) to make a printer available to the system. As you select each connection type in the left side of the window, a different Properties area appears in the right side. For example, if you select Windows Printer via Samba, text boxes appear where you can enter the printer name, a userID, and a password to access the network printer. Click the Browse button to browse your local network to locate shared printers. After you’ve selected the connection type and changed any Properties settings, click Forward to continue with the wizard.

3. Select the printer manufacturer or the location of the PPD file. Ubuntu uses PostScript printer description (PPD) files to format files for printing. PPD files are based on the same concept as the standard printer drivers you’ve probably used in Microsoft Windows. Each printer must have a PPD installed for CUPS to know how to format text and graphics sent to the printer. This wizard window allows you to select the PPD file to use for the new printer. You have two options:

• Select the printer manufacturer from the list of installed drivers.
• Install your own PPD file for the printer.

If you’re lucky enough to have the PPD file for your printer, copy it to a location on your workstation and select the Provide PPD File option. Browse to the location of the file and select it, then click Forward. If you don’t have the PPD file for your printer, you’ll have to hope that Ubuntu has your specific printer make and model defined in its library. If you find the printer manufacturer listed, select it and click Forward.

4. If you selected a printer manufacturer, the next wizard window provides a list of specific printer models and PPD files. Select the printer model and (optionally) the proper PPD file. This wizard window asks you to select the specific model for your printer. Hopefully, your printer model will be listed. If not, you must go back a step and find your own PPD file to install. If your specific model is listed, select it, and a list of available PPD files is shown. Some models may have only one PPD file, but others may have two or more files to choose from. In that case, one is usually marked as recommended. Try that PPD file first. If it doesn’t work, select a different PPD file. Clicking the Forward button takes you to the final wizard window (some printer drivers also have an optional window, which appears before the final wizard window, for setting individual options).

5. Define a printer name for the printer, and add the optional description and location if you want to include more information about the printer.

6. Click Apply in the Summary window to finish adding the new printer.

The new printer is added as an icon in the Printer Configuration window (even if you mapped to a remote printer). You should now see the new printer when printing from applications on your system. However, before getting too carried away with printing, it’s a good idea to check how the printer is configured.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets

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