Printing Problems

Posted by Greg Laden on April 14, 2009
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The other day I wanted to print a single 4 by 6 photo on the all-in-one printer Lizzie gave me last year. I was doing this from my Linux computer. I assumed that this would be tricky because this is one of those machines that’s gotta have a complex and strange printer driver and maybe it would not work on my humble Linux box.

I don’ t know why I had such a stoopid thought. I got the image up in The Gimp, opened “Printer Properties” and specified that I wanted a 4 by 6 photo quality, and hit “Print.” And it was done.

Linux in Exile has a post on Windows Printing and how much of a pain it is. There are some Windows Jingoists giving Mr. Exile a hard time. Have a look: Frustrated by Windows printing

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Comments

  1. #1 Tony P
    April 14, 2009

    I’m used to using CUPS printers on Linux. They work rather well.

  2. #2 Spiv
    April 15, 2009

    If you have trouble printing in windows then you’ve had a stroke and should see a doctor immediately. I may have a biased job function, but it’s not rocket science.

  3. #3 C. Chu
    April 15, 2009

    I can’t say my Linux printing experiences have been all that good, either. I have an HP laserjet 1018. Unlike most other printers, this one didn’t work plug-and-play with Ubuntu. There was no preinstalled PPD, and when the wizard tried to go online to find one and subsequently said it worked.. nothing ever printed.

    I eventually found hplip and ran that installer, and now it’s fine. But it certainly was more of a pain setting up this printer than anything I’ve ever done in Linux.

  4. #4 Nathan Myers
    April 15, 2009

    If you have trouble printing in Windows, probably you should scour the web looking for a downloadable and installable driver before reporting to a doctor. Odds are you’ll find one, somewhere, and it’s fairly likely to work.

    If somebody could tell me how to get CUPS to stop listing phantom printers, such as IPP services advertised by various Macs in the office, I’d be much obliged. Picking “remove” in the Gnome-print program does make them go away for a few seconds.

  5. #5 Ray Ingles
    April 15, 2009

    We’ve got an HP PSC 3200xi. The Linux driver (hplip) is about 14MB. The install on Windows? Over 800MB. That’s not a typo. I flat-out could not believe that when I read it, and dang if it didn’t install that much cruft onto the disk.