Ubuntu - Printers

Even though technology gurus keep predicting a paperless society, for now we’re stuck having to print some things out. In the past, printing was one of the dark areas in Linux. Trying to get modern printers working with Linux was a challenge. However, recently there’ve been some amazing advances that make Linux more printer friendly. Possibly the biggest advance in this area has been the common UNIX printing system (CUPS). CUPS provides a common interface between UNIX (and Linux) systems and printers. It runs in the background as a service, connecting to any defined printers and waiting for applications to send print jobs. Because it runs in the background, CUPS can communicate with remote printers and accept print jobs from them. Ubuntu provides a simple tool to access and set up the CUPS server running on your workstation. The Printer Configuration tool provides a graphical interface to add, configure, and remove printers on your Ubuntu workstation. This section describes how to use the Printer Configuration tool to manage your workstation printers.


The Printer Configuration Tool
The Printer Configuration tool provides an easy way to configure the CUPS server running on the system and any printers you’ve defined. Selecting System -> Administration -> Printing from the desktop menu starts the Ubuntu Printer Configuration tool.

There are two things you can configure from the Printer Configuration window:
• Server settings: Allows you to set features controlling how the CUPS server manages system printing features.
• Local and network printers: Displays icons for all of the printers defined on the system and allows you to change individual printer properties on them.

The following sections describe how to use the Printer Configuration window to set the CUPS and printer properties for your system.


Printer Server Settings
Selecting Server -> Settings from the menu bar in the Printer Configuration window produces the Basic Server Settings window.

There are a few different settings you can play with here to help out with printer administration:

• Show printers shared by other systems: Displays printers found by browsing the network.

• Share published printers connected to this system: Allows local network clients to connect to any of the local printers marked as shared.

• Allow printing from the Internet: Allows remote network clients to connect to any of the local printers marked as shared.

• Allow remote administration: Enables remote clients to connect to the CUPS server running on this system.

• Allow users to cancel any job (not just their own): By default, users can cancel only their own print jobs. Enabling this feature allows any user to cancel any other user’s print job. Although this is a handy feature, it can be dangerous in a multiuser environment (especially if your users like to play tricks on one another).

• Save debugging information for troubleshooting: By default, the CUPS server generates a moderate amount of logging information to monitor printer use or problems. If you’re having trouble with a specific printer configuration, you can enable this feature to produce more (lots more) information in the log files. After determining the settings appropriate for your CUPS server environment, you can add and set up individual local printers.

Source of Information : Wiley Ubuntu Linux Secrets