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Making Linux Printing as Easy as in Windows
Jonny5 writes: "In preparation for the transition from windows to a Linux based workstation, the main focus is that of peripheral compatibility. Sure Linux is rock solid stable, and has an almost totally customizable GUI, but dammit, if my hardware won't work, what's the point? ...After hearing about TurboPrint, and their claim to provide 'Printer set-up and configuration is as simple as on Windows or MacOS,' I had to rise to the challenge. LinuxLookup.com has done a full review of TurboPrint For Linux."
How come these small things are always lacking in linux?
I guess the real question is how well it can handle some of the cheap Windows-only printers that are given away for $99 that don't have Linux drivers available anywhere. If it really can support a lot of these, then $99+$19 is still cheap for a printer.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
I use KPrint (part of KDE infrastructure) with CUPS... I dont think I could ask for much more, though admittedly I think you still have to set the thing up via the CUPS web interface.
Still, it's better than using lpr/lpq and wondering what bit of the pipeline ate your document =)
.. is some kind of wine-driven printer emulation layer, that would let you use windows printer driver sin Linux. Why? Because I have a printer that I have had for 4 years now, and is still nowhere near a Linux solution. Is this idea even possible? I think it would be great if it were, since I could finally use my printer!
Cons:
limited printer support
tarball install
missing dependencies
Pros (or why should I use this over standard KDE print config/RedHat printer filters/anything else):
Perhaps your obscure WinPrinter is supported
Nice effort guys, but there's no real value here.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
LOL - Windows isn't about making things easy to use or well- designed from a user perspective.
Always aim higher than an existing Windows solution!
A C
As easy as windows? Does that mean it's going to ask to be rebooted three times, crap out because it can't find the files it needs on the install disk, then (after I manually find the files) install the same printer device twice, in such a way that neither of them works? Uninstall, reboot, reinstall, reboot, repeat until device works.
I'm sure there's an o/s easier to configure than linux, but, good lord, it isn't Windows.
When users of an open source operating system are all but forced to rely on commercial products just to install a simple printer driver, there's something amiss. Does anybody know of an open source project to provide similar support?
IMHO, setting up a printer is just as easy in Linux as in Windows - if you already have the driver, that is. apt-get install cupsys cubsys-bsd and point your browser at http://localhost:631, then just chose your printer.
If you need to compile Ghostscript with stp-support it gets much harder though. Buying an older printer makes stuff a whole lot easier.
Typical response from the average winblows developer who can't understand why the 99 cent 'super-dooper app' he's developed and priced at a measly 799.99 gets pirated....
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
It is time we stop printing, let the forests survive. Tree's are good, lets more to a paperless system, unless of course you mean printing to a file. :)
it shoudent be made easy it should have already been easy
Since it's shareware and the free version prints a crappy logo none of the big distributions are ever going to use it as opposed to printtool or cups so it'll always remain a minority thing. Less eyes, more bugs...
Have you ever tried to set up a shared printer on a windows box attached to a LocalTalk network (Mac)? This is NOT easy :-(
Granted that is not the most popular case, but you've got to admit that MS didn't make that option too obvious. Those bastards. My HP 2000NT is still printing 2 pages of PS crap at the end of each printing session ONLY from the windows box (with latest drivers and 4 days watch in hand with MS/HP tech support.)
PPA -- the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
This is one of the core problems with Linux. Someone comes out charging money so we can do something as menial as print documents, and we actually have to take it seriously.
It's part of the basic problem with the degree of modularization (a supposed "Good Thing") that we have, I guess. Still, it'd be nice if we could have all this sort of basic admin stuff thrown into a central location with other peripherals, instead of one for the OS, one for the GUI, etc.
IMO, this is something Windows did right. I've been working with Linux for a long time so this isn't a surprise to me, but I can just imagine the look I'd get from newbies I'm trying to win over to our side when I try to give reasons for why Linux doesn't have a true equivalent for the Control Panel.
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charlton heston is more of a man than yo
What's wrong with this picture?
Printer set-up and configuration is as simple as on Windows or MacOS
TurboPrint for Linux comes as a tarball containing 'install' and 'uninstall' shell scripts, installation instructions, and all the binary software.
Yes, it's a command-line installer!
The default printing would be in black and white, and when I want to print in colour, I can just change the print command used by the program from 'lpr' to something like 'lpt -Ptp0'.
Yes, you have to give command line options to set printing modes every time you print with a different mode!
And yet this gets an 18 out of 20 in the review. It's amazing to me that this late in the game, there are still so many Linux-heads who just don't get it. This is not just inferior to Mac and Windows -- it's a giant quantum leap backward from where Mac has been for seventeen years and Windows for six. Real end users don't memorize command languages.
Tim
I use cups and it does all I need to do and more.
It's almost completely manageable via a web interface (the only thing I know of that isn't is setting the default printer). It integrates very nicely with samba. It uses gimpprint drivers to create nice output on newer printers.
The reviews indicates that it can use cups, but I don't yet understand what this gives me that cups doesn't do already.
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
And why do you think that is ? also, why do you think Linux (and most Unices) are more secure on a network than Windows ?
I agree that the Linux kernel is better designed (although to be honest I know next to nothing about the newer Windows kernels, and some supposedly knowledgeable people told me they were actually pretty good). But the biggest reason why Linux is more stable and more secure is because you, the computer-savvy user, took time to configure everything right and install servers right.
Now, if you want to make a Linux-based system that your grandma can use, you'll have to mask the concept of users vs. root with some suid installation utils, you'll have to allow everybody and their dogs to install any piece of software and insmod any driver from any vendor, you might have to slap in the equivalent of a registry to alleviate the current mess of etc files in a typical Linux fs, ...etc...
If you do all that, if you make Linux user-friendly like Windows is (supposedly, I can't even begin to comprehend its organization), then I guarantee you the resulting system will be less stable and less secure than a standard Linux distro.
The real reason why Windows is shitty is because it's designed to be used by computer idiots. I believe that if computer users were required to learn basic computer sanity, and Windows didn't have the convenience/security/stability tradeoffs it has today to make up for computer idiocy, Windows would kick any OS' butt any day. And "basic computer sanity" doesn't mean the user has to learn how to install daemons, it means "don't run executables from Joe_Sixpack@hotmail.com", just like "don't stick candy bars in the toaster" in real life : if people had that basic good sense, there would be no auto execution in Outlook, because people would find that crazy.
The next problem after printing is ironed out is the lack of a single, easy to use tool to add, temporarily disable, manage and remove fonts in any Linux setup, that makes one set of fonts (both ttf and Type 1) in a single directory available to all applications system wide, in the way that Adobe Type Manager does.
We then need CMYK capability in The Gimp. After these are in place, it will be possible to assemble a desktop publishing suite that will have mass appeal, because anyone will be able to design and publish to QuarkXpress/Photoshop/Illustrator quality, and print the results, all in a rock solid, free alternative to Windoze and OSX, without any pain.
ATH0 Bitcoin: 1DnwFLXczVZV8kLJbMYoheUrpqHesjxrSi
UNIX apps don't send GDI commands - they usually send postscript commands.
So unless someone wants to write a postscript to GDI filter, that approach won't work.
Oh, and things that need to communicate directly with your hardware (like this printer driver) may not be able to run in wine anyway.
Well, that depends on who installed it doesn't it :)
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
I use Cups on my ML 8.1 box and have never had a problem with it and my Canon BJC-2100. This whole thing just seems like hogwash. And in response to the comment about cheap printers for less than 99$. My Canon cost about 49$ after a 20$ rebate. Its a fine printer and its USB. Just be careful what you buy.
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If you're into pipes, I'll leave it as an alternate excercise for you to mull.
Easy does it.
This article is based upon the conclusion that someone wants to convert from a windows environment to a linux enviroment. Turbo print is not the solution. People having to buy extra software (that they can see as a part not included in the whole linux package) is not convinient, it just add's extra confusion. I would be more happy if this was a normal (open-source) kernel module or something.
By the way: Turbo linux is here
Look a monkey!
Even on Debian, it was pretty much point-and-click for me...fire up a web browser, point it at http://localhost:631, click on "Manage Printers", click "Add Printer," enter a superuser name and password, and follow the steps from then on.
It really is that simple, unless you've got a distro that has a weird installation of CUPS.
Heck, on Mandrake boxes, one can often have the printer autodetected, and the installer can often (in my experience) choose the correct driver.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I use CUPS through the web admin module, and it's almost as easy as windows. The only problem is that you need to know the name of your printer driver. But they're easy to look up. Anyway, I managed to get perfect printing to a remote HP Deskjet 930C working easily. Just by pointing and clicking.
With other hardware networorking under Linux seems to have been the biggest win-win. Many network cards are supported under Linux now as well. So are many sound cards.
Support comes slower under Linux, but it does seem to come. More and more larger companies are supporting LInux and with the way that windows XP is moving I am wondering how many people will really want to stay with windows. Since companies like IBM and other large companies are beginning to back linux it may only be a matter of time before the smaller companies and companies that promise Linux support actually do.
Personally I think it would be nice the be able to buy hardware for Linux and have it come with open source drivers and software. Or atleast instructions on what software you need to have on the machine and kernel drivers. Soon I hope...
Only 'flamers' flame!
One part of the solution is simple: buy only PostScript printers. PostScript printer support is quite mature in all UNIX-like operating systems.
The hard part: Under X11, there is no default mapping from screen fonts to printer fonts (which can have completely different metrics). That's why printing with non-standard fonts is often problematic if you don't use proven tools such as TeX or roff.
So far all I've seen is:
Not as good as Windows/Mac
Redhat/SuSE/etc... already has this
Get a better printer
It's not free? (Actually haven't seen this one...yet)
What kind of loser are you? RTFM!
Sheesh. Typical. Kinda reminds me of this artical
jesus christ you linux freaks, when will you accept that as long as you're going to continue with the "it's free fix it yourself" and "linux IS easy on the desktop, we have OpenOffice!" attitude, you're going to get SHIT for new users.
all this bullshit about stats showing linux users being low.. and you complain then that it's cos newbies were interviewed.. well guess what, isn't the object of the game to make linux accessible to newbies? dumb fucks.
here's how to make printing work under linux: buy a postscript printer. there, that was easy. next article pls.
Sure Linux is rock solid stable, and has an almost totally customizable GUI, but dammit, if my hardware won't work, what's the point?
... and then we find out that most of their software WILL NOT RUN under XP (yes even by using compatibility mode) and that they will have had to have gotten a new scanner and printer because they wont work either.
I set up a windows xp box for someone the other day. It was QUITE an upgrade from their old 133 mhz computer -- they were excited that all their programs will run SUPER FAST and that their printers/scanners/etc will be OH SO nice...
Now I'm sure that windows xp has changed QUITE a few things but come on... they have used winxp for a bit now to see if they can put up with it.. they now want me to install windows 98 on there... quite an upgrade (if you ask me)...
Now before you say "Put them on Linux!" -- get real.. would you put your mother-in-law on linux --> knowing you dont want to put up with her "Whats this? BASH? Is this a joke??"... feh on them all..
AFAICS, the only things needed to have that Windows feel wrt printing are:
- widgets (GTK+ and Qt widgets) that parse your
/etc/printcap so that you can select which printer to print with without having to use "lpr -Pblarg". This would actually be REMARKABLY trivial.
- more work on tools that autodetect printers and set up
/etc/printcap's accordingly. I know there are tools that do that, but my understanding is that they still not a lot of work (maybe with maintaining a database), probably because a lot of people (like me) don't care and don't want a Windows-esque printing system.
If you get those two things, then theoretically, printing under Linux would be indistinguishable from printer under Windows using existing tools.hehe, good one. An operating system as big as Windows XP that is vulerable out of the box with the default setup is unacceptable to me. Many people that have already purchased this operating system will not patch this hole. We'll be seeing Code Red II pretty soon.
Is RH 7 vulnerable OOTB with the default installation, no. Some services such as wuftpd are vulnerable to a remote exploit, but the user must turn those on manually. It is then assumed that the user knows what he or she is doing and then secures the service by updating the RPMs. In the XP case, the user just has to take the computer home from Best Buy and plug the thing into the cable modem and it's vulnerable.
In my experience, Lexmark has wonderful Linux support for its products. $79 at Best Buy got me a very high quality 1200dpi inkjet printer (the Lexmark Z23) with both Windows and Linux support. The Linux side actually works better than its Windows counterpart, oddly enough. It runs as a daemon process, does PostScript exactly the way it should, and the fact that its a USB printer doesn't complicate the situation either. It all just plain works, out of the box. Even has a nice graphical config utility
Kudos to Lexmark for doing it right!
Bowie J. Poag
I've recently rediscovered cups. For my printing needs, mixed unix and some windows it beats everything else hands down. It provides easy web based administration or if you're fimilar with the bsd or sysv (big bonus for me since i primarly use solaris) style command line tools it has those as well. But the number one thing that makes me choose cups overy anything else is its support for using PPD drivers. Need a driver for that freaky printer, Xerox DocuCenter 332ST in our case? Download the PPD stick it in /usr/share/cups/model and off you go. Now i can use all the features of the printer. Not just simply print to it. Eg. now i can colate, staple, duplex print etc. Couple this with kups or xpp which are "print setup" like programs that let you adjust your print settings and its almost as easy as on a mac. So aside from support for "winprinters" how is turbo print different from cups?
This is, in my opinion, one of the areas that will continue to limit the ability of Linux to be used on the desktop. The printing process is simple and flexible for a hacker, if it is a supported printer, but fails the mom test miserably.
What is really needed is an organization with some clout to get behind an API that can be integrated into applications, with a standard, integrated menu selected printer control. Just like the Macs have had for 17 years and Windoze has had for 10? years. There have been a couple of attempts in this direction, which seem to have mostly fizzled. That is why heavyweight clout will be required to make such a thing work.
CUPS is an improvement and a little easier to use for the printer driver installation and setup. But this does not address the user interface. This is something that perhaps Redhat, on the Gnome side, and perhaps some other organization on the KDE side, should have handled years ago. I think this is far more important than having a Gnome/KDE office suite.
The fundamentals should be the first priority, and in an office, printing is absolutely fundamental and critical. A big enough busines can perhaps afford to hire a Linux guru to set up printing, but that should not be required and will remain a roadblock. In fairness, Windoze printer installation and setup is often no picnic either, but that is no excuse for Linux being so lame in this area.
very nice. and you can install the gimp printing stuff as per FAQ to get ppd files for your printer.
Im curious though, will win2k drivers work under XP? That's a possible solution if the manufacturer hasnt put out their XP drivers.
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Running Mandrake 8.0 & 8.1 at work with 2 large HP printers, I notice that stair-stepping is back. Postscript printing works fine for the most part but I get quasi-random stair stepping of plain old text docs. It's random enough that the last time I was trying to track it down, I printed the same document 4 times and the middle 2 were stair stepped and the other 2 weren't.
It's lame and I hate telling the users "just print it again and it should be okay" but never knowing what the problem is.
I remember solving this problem back in 1995 by writing a small shell script to act as a print filter and translate the LFs to CR/LFs or some such nonsense. Now that I'm printing primarily Postscript, I don't think adding a print filter (to everyone's computer) would work out very well.
I'm also constantly annoyed at CUPS probing port 631 on my entire network because it tries to be it's own print server for every printer on the network, so it'll have 6 lines in the output of "lpstat -t" for the same printer, but using 5 other computers as print servers plus itself.
Is there any decent documentation on CUPS outside of just how to install it and run the GUIs? I'm not impressed.
Flame away if you have solutions...
*nrmrvrk
Keine eier
I know I'm going to get modded down for this, but what's use of having a free(as in beer) OS when you then have to buy all these little $19.99 packages to do something as mundane as print?
Yeah yeah, I know it's because lazy companies don't want to release Linux drivers, but it doesn't change the situation. How many little software programs must we buy to get basic functionality?
On second thought, I don't mind being modded down. I'd been months since I've been modded at all.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
"My side" wrt Linux is a place where things really ARE modular and logical. Where, if you have an extraordinary knowledge of systems and computer science as a whole, you can enjoy your time in it. Where, if something isn't working, you can change and recompile it within hours.
Your "our side" seems to be that awful "I want Linux to be a better Windows than Windows!" garbage. Here's some advice: Linux is not Windows, and Linux will never be Windows. It will never be worse than Windows; it will never be better than Windows -- IT WILL NEVER BE COMPARABLE TO WINDOWS. If you want something like Windows, use Windows. If you want something kind of like Windows but different, use Windows. If you want something better than Windows -- sorry to say it -- you're going to have to live with Windows. LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS.
And why on Earth would you be trying to "win over" someone to "your side"?! Can you even THINK of anything more dishonest? Linux is not Britney Spears; it is not a Happy Meal. If people use it, it's because they want a free Unix-like operating systems, they've done their research, and they WANT to use it. It's not because they've been tricked into something (sorry -- "won over"), so that when they finally do try out Linux, they're horribly disappointed at how un-Windows-like it is, and hold some kind of great resentment towards it.
Look around the web. How many "Linux sucks" posts and websites do you find? A LOT. Is it because Linux actually sucks? Not likely. It's because some "helpful" friend tried to "win them over". They probably said something like "if you're tired of Windows crashing all the time, try this other operating system called Linux". They try Linux, expecting it to be better than Windows, and SURPRISE SURPRISE find out that it "sucks". If you use Linux expecting it to be Windows, guess it, it sucks donkey balls. Not just any donkey balls either -- big ones. LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS. DON'T PRETEND IT IS. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, FOR THE GOOD OF HUMANITY AND COMPUTER USERS EVERYWHERE, DO NOT "WIN OVER" SOMEONE EVER AGAIN.
For those that aren't aware, Turboprint has been available for the old Amiga for years (a decade or so?). It was an excellent product, and, in a way, it is nice to see the company moving on. However, I doubt they understand that closed source software tends to have a very low rate of acceptance in the Linux world -- especially when open-sourced, free software, competition is already established.. I'm betting that they are jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire as far as markets go...
REAL problems with the posters suggestion: it doesn't spool, it requires direct access to the device (think "multiuser capable? Not bloody likely!").
Loaded up printerdrake in my Mandrake 8.1 installation.
2 minutes later, I run upstairs to find see the printer goin to work on a perfect test page!
Mandrake rules, kids. No need to spend 20 dollars on anything else.
Berto
Ever tried sending a postscript file to a network postscript printer from windows ?
.. NOT!.
impossible!
the closest I got was installing a windows port of ghostscript, using that to interpret the postscript and print it to the windows printer driver (via GDI) which in turn converts it back to postscript and sends it to the printer.
now that's userfriendly
I used to use Mandrake and could print fairly well in color, but recently I switched to Debian. I tried many times to get my HP Printer/Scaner/Copier 500 to work with apsfilter, but I had to success. I tried the demo of this and it worked on the first try. My printer is not even technically supported, so I picked a HP and it worked in color, I think better than in Mandrake.
It may not be the best choice for everyone, but I like it.
Linux users and developers are still stuck on a single box mentality. Turbo Print offers very little in the way of advancing Linux printing ease, compared to products that are already available.
The problem though, is that they are targeting Windows abillity to setup a local printer on a single workstation. When it comes to Windows printing abillity there are two major advantages that Linux and Trubo Print do not even come close to. The first is Windows plug and play printer capabillity. Plug a printer into the parallel port and chances are high that Windows will detect, identify and install the drivers for the printer. Linux has nothing like this.
But, the second advantage that Windows has is probably it's greatest advantage. That is point and print. This is the abillity of NT/2000 to allow the user to browse available printers on the network. Then, when the user clicks on the printer, the correct driver is automatically downloaded and installed. No configuration is required by the user.
Simply point and print. Duh.
Everything works fine. Including native language support..
I don't think we need another printing system.
My idea is every one focus to CUPS. Its solves the problem.
[My english is better than most other people's Turkish, so please point out mistakes politely. Thank you.]
and this will unfortunatly probably never happen. Linux people (myself included) are generally gung ho about having multiple apis for everything. while this is good in some ways, it's awful in others. we have X, with no kind of gui standard. theres pdq (what i use), lpr (lousy imho), cups (gonna give it a spin in a bit), and this. for sound, there was oss, which i used for ever, programmed for, and everything, and now alsa, which absolutly rocks (featurewise). and these are for common, user side things. people continue to speculate what linux needs to 'win the desktop,' and the list is generally something like : apps, ms office, games.
while these would help, it'd be more helpful to people writing those if they had a standard api to write for, rather than trying to accomodate all of them. but as soon as you say 'one standard' you get the general 'one world, one os' reply. its unfortunate, really, despite how helpful it really would be.
theres nothing wrong with progress, but some coherence would provide worlds of help to developers.
just my 2 cents
All thats lacking for linux printing is the knowledge of whats avaliable, check out linuxprinting.org As a summary if you use Redhat use printtool, suse have there own setup in yast, Mandrake probably have something too, for debian or most other distributions use aps though as with most setups you need ghostscript(for postscript conversion) and a printer spooler such as lpd or lprng. Never used it but CUPS is supposed to be easy to use and of course you could just buy a postscript printer. I don't see why this commercial program is needed, use whats out there and free as in beer and speech!
Linux is not stable by any stretch of the imagination. It crashes just as much as Windows does. On /. others have said XP is more stabler than Linux.
(* Linux == the kernel, as Linux is only a kernel).
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
Also, make sure there are no spaces after the 'No's. The first time I tried configuring this, I had a space after the word and the braindead parser couldn't recognize the option because of it(not sure if they've fixed it in the newer versions or not)...so I swore for a couple hours before actually checking my syslog as to why the damned thing kept ignoring the option :)
The GUI should let you purge completed jobs, IMNSHO. For a basically single-user system, it's best to just disable those two options, unless you are into checking your /var/spool/cups directory on a regular basis (I have better things to do with my time)
Since you missed it: he said Windows is more insecure than *nix because it's meant to be used by idiots; make it less idiot-proof and many of the recurring problems would disappear.
-Legion
Cus it's KDE, that's why.
Some of us want choices.
Yes, I realize I can just use CUPS. I just don't like KDE, that's all. For that matter, GNOME isn't too cool either. I use wmaker.
I use RedHat with KDE 2.2.1 and it comes with a great printer configuration tool..takes like 30 seconds to setup a printer - seriously, and it's easier then windows ::cough::
I never have any problems printing just about anything with it. Its only drawback is that in the full configuration it needs lots of dependancies. Now one thing is that I'm using a Lexmark Postscript printer. I can imagine a case where someone using really cheap no-brand printer might have problems.
When are we gonna start getting stuff like "Prettifying your Box for Spring", and "Is your Gay Nerd Lover Faithful? Take our Quiz and Find Out!"? Cosmo for fucking dorks.
I use SuSE and find the printer config really easy. During install it will detect a local printer and allow you to set up a network printer etc. Dead easy.
I used to maintain printer drivers for Windows and OS/2, and the implementation of the print subsystem on those operating systems is one of the very few areas where I've thought the design was more elegant than any UNIX solution I've seen. I suspect this is due to the modular nature of UNIX, which in this case turns out to be a weakness.
In a nutshell, the OS/2 and Windows kernels export an interface that you write functions to when you're writing a driver. This interface covers page rendering as well as printer set-up and configuration. That means anyone who wants to render a page need only call those functions and doesn't need to worry about what printer he's sending to. Integration of feature selection into your application program is also much simpler and takes advantage of the code written by the printer driver programmer.
The down side to all this of course, that since the GUI subsystems of OS/2 and Windows ran in kernel space, a poorly written printer driver can easily crash your entire system.
Only recently have efforts been made to address the rendering side of the problem with the Xprt extension to XF86 and the toolbox-level gnome-print library (I assume the KDE people have something similar as well.) While these efforts are good, a printer manufacturer is not likely to put the effort into supporting all of them. This means that we will continue to write our own rendering code to render into PostScript.
Ghostscript seems to have become the de-facto printer driver for Linux and the only real complaints I have about it are that it's much harder to integrate printer features into your program when Ghostscript is in use. I ended up trying to get around these problems by writing an incomplete PPD parser for the printers I was working with. This parser generated information files about the printer features and a lpr replacement program would present these features to the user. We did a pretty good job of making a GUI installer and front-end for printer feature selection, but it only supported our printers.
Technically it wouldn't be a very difficult problem to address these issues and make everything seamless for the programmer and the users. Politically it's rather more difficult though. This is one area where you're going to need a single standard if you want the printer manufacturers to write drivers for you. There needs to be one render interface, ideally at the X level so the toolkits can make use of it and one feature communication interface so that various programs can query for printer features. Queueing and spooling is already pretty well addressed.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
While CUPS makes life easier, I still have a lot of problems with Linux. I run SuSE Linux 7.3 and have an Epson Stylus Color 800 printer connected to a networked print server (Netgear PS104). While Linux talks to the print server just fine, no matter what I try Linux takes 2 sheets of paper per page (yes, I have it configured for Letter and tried the inkjet letter settings). What is worse, however, is I get random horizontal lines on the page. Note that the output is going through Ghostscript.
Now, with the same setup, print server, etc. I have no problems when printing from OS/2 or Windows. Furthermore I do not get the horizontal lines (so it's not a cabling problem or a problem with the print server).
Now the Epson is a fairly common printer with well-documented control codes. I guess the only way to print properly in Linux is with a Postscript printer.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
As soon as they plug it into the cable modem, it will download the patch, notify the user there is a new critical update, ask if they want to intstall by clicking yes, and the problem is solved. Of course, enabling the built in firewall also solves this problem as well, but who's counting - facts are few and far between in these arguments.
The real problem and reason why printing in Linux, esp. from the GUI, is a pain in the behind is that no distribution has a working system-wide font configuration mechanism where X and gs can painlessly access the same fonts (Recently I stated that Debian does, but it still has problems with font names with spaces in them, rendering it practically useless because many common truetype fonts have spaces in them) and the lack of a working printing toolkit. I don't know about libgnomeprint, but Qt/KDE's printing is horribly, horribly broken.
This leads to the dilemma that GUI application developers not only have to write routines to display their data on screen, but also ones to bring everything to Postscript. Web browsers are a prime example where the screen display is complex enough so that there's no more resources left to reinvent the wheel in Postscript, leading to Mozilla's broken printing.
The final problem is the lack of Unicode support in the ancient Postscript/Type 1 font standard. The introduction of the Euro made this painfully obvious for European Linux users.
Before we look at the hardware, we need a reliable printing library that surpasses Postscript's stone-age encoding, rendering out every single character. I believe libgnomeprint wants to do that, but I haven't been tracking it. We need a printing system that does not rely on printer drivers that are compiled into the PS rasterizer (lpr, ugh!) or has other quirks (cups is a step forward with its modularity and two behind with its own rasterizing program, effectively introducing a separate app for PS->screen and PS->printer). The hardware support is already here, but what use is a fast car if you can't get the door open? (Don't you just love metaphors?)
I just installed Turboprint, and it's definitively a nice product.
My HPDJ970C is supposed to work with cups and lpd, but I only had it work with text documents so far. Printing photographs worked, but the result was very ugly (not something that you can call a photograph) .
Turboprint seems to print photographs as well as windows, and that's something I've been waiting for a long time.
Plus it has a "printer toolbox" to align and clean printing heads. No more need for a Windows partition any more.
Just one thing : what's the best piece of Linux software to use in order to properly scale photographs before printing them?
{{.sig}}
I think your turbin is wrapped too tightly.
why not provide an option where if the kernel detects it, a driver is loaded at this point, so you can print whatever you want whether you're running X or not? I get a full printer ID string in/from the kernel at boot time. Why not tie it in here?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
AFAIK, you can use KDE applications without using KDE as your window manager. I used KMail when I was using Enlightenment as my window manager.
Their driver list on the website claims that Epson Stylus Color 480 is supported by TurboPrint. I wonder if its (otherwise same, but) USB-only version Stylus Color 480SXU works with it. Does anyone know?
hapo
While setting up CUPS last night I found this tool which, according to the page, provides the one last thing not in CUPS: a GUI to adjust printer settings and schedule jobs. These things aren't covered properly/at all by the CUPS web interface. For myself, I'm right with lpoptions for my configuration needs and lp for scheduling, but if you miss Print and Print Setup in Windows you might want to check out XPP.
That stuff is patented and thus illegal.
Instead of complaining to developers complain to your congressman because they are the only people that can change it.
Lies.
Its a nice idea for printers with advanced functionality, eg. epson's photo printers. Don't be so quick to condem a reasonably priced alternative to the somewhat limited prepackaged linux drivers.
Open Source advocates assume that Open software will always be better, in every sense, than Closed, because so many people are examining the source code. It's true that objective source code scrutiny does make better source code. But there's more to good software than absence of code errors. You need testing. Regression testing, usability testing, stress testing... MS can pay for all this because of their huge revenue stream. Development models that attempt to compete with Microsoft's closed model forget this at their peril.
Even if your printer isn't supported by default, installing it is usually just a matter of locating and installing the correct software at LinuxPrinting.org. Personally, I ran into a few complications with my supposedly unsupported Lexmark Z43, but the fact that I was eventually able to get it working shows that the Cups system is flexible enough to handle a far greater number of printers than TurboPrint supports.
The first ever Ultimate Frisbee video game: here (now
What?? Linux not stable?
Okay you may be right. But windows 2000 and xp stability is still far away from reaching the level of linux stability.
Once I had a fucked up cooler (I spent some time without knowing that was the problem).
My linux box crashed 2 times every week(mostly when compiling stuff) with kernel panics. I thought it was an awfull lot, but it was NOTHING compared to pushing the reset button in 5 times a day in win98. And 5 times IS the exact number (maybe more).
Then win2000 stability. Then how come realplayer manages to hardlock my box everytime I start it??
Maybe it wasn't even the win2000 version (I was too lazy to check). But this is not supposed to happen! But anyway you can run fucking exe's, corrupted elfs or whatever on linux. It will not crash because it runs some fucked up program.
I have never ever succeeded in crashing freebsd.
Even with my fucked up cooler, the system was still useable. I got a very tough warning message, but the system was still running. I have never in my whole life known a freebsd system to crash.
That may be exaggerated, but what I mean is that, as a single user doing everything I please I have never managed to crash it. As for windows 98 I can crash it before it is fully started. And windows 2000 I could crash in 10 minutes (max). As for win xp I wouldn't know but it'll be not much better.
Jeez, you people are stupid. If you use kmail... all the kdelibs are loaded. You are RUNNING KDE, fool.
Someone get a sourceforge project going, then we can start reverse engineering the idea to make GNU Furbo Print.
Its the linux way.
I don't think that any person who wants to maintain a good OS will install anythin from RealNetworks. It is full of spyware and ads that destroy your OS.
check out http://www.linuxprinting.org. I have found the foomatic tool very handy. No need to change the printer settings manually (And i can even use the default windows drivers w/ it on my windows machines).
for Granny -- it will be a second tier OS.
I'm still amazed it has so little functionality in this area!
So by definition it's a Microsoft Computer... and a Microsoft industry.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but my version of the GIMP (1.2.1, default version that comes with RH7.2) has the ability to decompose the image into CMYK: right click, image, mode, decompose; then up pops a dialog box to extract the channels into RGB, HSV, CMY, CMYK, or Alpha. I chose CMYK and got four mono images for each of the channels.
-- This
It doesn't really get much better if the "linux-heads" try to put a GUI front-end on things. Widget layouts are often poorly thought out and often covey contradictory or ambiguous choices for configuration. These sad attempts at usability are even praised more highly than the supposedly "easy" command line stuff. The real problem is that the linux hackers designing interfaces in the linux community get sugar-coated reviews of their stuff by other linux hackers who are far too eager to say something is usable out of their ignorance of user interface design and out of their belief that anything under GPL is inherently superior to anything proprietary, interface or otherwise. As a personal experience, I once talked to a person who created a linux installer for a very prominent linux distribution and I mentioned a few of the dozens of confusing or ambiguous or inconsistent things I found in its interface. He couldn't understand what the problem was: he thought I thought that it "wasn't pretty enough". And yet die-hard linux zealots who remember vi commands before they remember their wife's anniversary claim that this interface is perfectly easy and that this installer is perfectly ready for the desktop.
The few people with interface design knowledge who point out these problems are usually called "whiners", and are told to shut up and code their own improvements.
Putting it bluntly, the linux development community is doing more to kill linux on the desktop than Bill Gates ever could. Microsoft realizes this, and that's they have never considered linux on the desktop a threat.
Everyone blames Linux for a lot of things. Remember that Linux is the operating system and KDE/Gnome are window managment APPLICATIONS that act as an interface to the operating system. If you have problems with ANYTHING done via a window manager, blame the application.
This is correct, but you get CMY or CMYK that has nothing to do with any particular device. The decomposition is done by just inverting the RGB values plus some black generation. When the conversion is done the right way, you always have one particular device in mind, otherwise CMYK is not different from RGB - anything that can be done in one colorspace has a similar corresponding operation in the other color space.
CMYK only becomes useful if you have device specifid CMYK. This however means that for the conversion of RGB or Lab or any other color space you are working in into CMYK you need a "device description file", which is usually an ICC profile that was created for your device.
To make Gimp fully CMY/CMYK aware, you need to add two things: All image manipulation operations have to work in the CMYK colorspace (this means that you don't have to first decompose the image) and we need a way to convert any image into a device specific CMYK file.
I'm running RH 7.1, which has LPR with Printtool by default, but after many wasted hours trying to get it to print reasonably well with any of my three printers, I finally found a solution that works.
The solution? CUPS with XPP. This basically gets me all the functionality I need, with compatibility in most apps. All of my KDE apps use CUPS's LPR emulation to print. StarOffice, Mozilla, and other X apps use XPP, in which the program sends the postscript data to XPP and XPP lets me select a printer, printing options, and sends it to cupsd. If any console apps want to print, they just use CUPS's LPR emulation. Samba also integrates with CUPS, letting me share my printers.
Setting up my printers was also a piece of cake. Downloaded & extracted the CUPS printer definitions from the website. Went to my nice CUPS admin page (http://localhost:631/) and went through the setup under "Add Printer." No config files to mess with or anything...
The only thing I could wish for is for RedHat to use CUPS as the default printing system, as other distros like Mandrake have done. It was really a pain to rip out printtool and all the crap it leaves behind.
Michael F. Robbins
... I just plug a printer in and print from any app or any host on the network all with plain lpr/lpd setup. Usually takes no more than a couple of minutes. I have no CUPSn no LprNG, no turbo whiz-bang .... no nuthin'
...
"But how? How do you do it?" you ask
RTFM and buy postscript printers. Not hard.
Hi Tim,
I didn't intend my diary entry to be a negative review of Argyll at all. In fact, I am very impressed with the software.
The problem with Argyll at present is that nobody has (yet) integrated all the pieces in such a way that your average graphic artist can make high quality profiles. The pieces are there, and they're of quite high quality. But (at present) you have to have some serious color science knowledge to ensure that you get good results.
My latest attempt at a profile on Argyll produces breathtaking clarity, but I'm still dealing with a purple hue shift for deep blues, which I'm pretty sure is caused by my use of CIE La*b* as the interim color space for gamut compression rather than CIECAM97. Argyll has support for the latter, it's just not what I used.
So I'm very hopeful that Argyll will serve as the engine for truly topnotch color management in the free software world. I'm not going to say anything about how long that will take, though. Right now, I'm not getting all that much encouragement from the user community, who seems to vastly prefer whining on Slashdot about how the current state of affairs is inadequate, rather than rolling up their sleeves, learning some color theory, building profiles, and helping develop the solution.
There, I've just whined on Slashdot myself. Thanks, I feel better now.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
I guess the LPRng programmer introduced to much crap. As a result LPRng is too diffecult for the ordinary linux user.
I myself even have the feeling LPRng contains bugs. I couldn't sort it out, and backported all the printing tools like printtool and lpr and rhs-filter from the source RPM's from redhat 5.2 , with
rpm --rebuild lpr-0.33-1.src.rpm
etc. Installing the resulting lpr-0.33-1.i386.rpm and also printtool and rhs-filter made me happy again.
printing now works as easy and solid as my older redhat 5.2 box.
Robert
Posting anonymously as I am trying to conserve my pitiful karma.
CUPS as easy as Windows? Have you actually read your post? Gather required driver, install software, point browser to obscure port and choose printer... Not hardly as easy as Windows.
With Plug-N-Pray, Windows generally auto-recgonizes your printer and can install generic drivers for it. If you want specific ones, just point the wizard to your CD or whatever. Much easier.
Before you disregard this as flame-bait, take a minute to honestly think about this... For Linux to truly exist on the desktop in the mainstream, things need to be this easy. For better or worse, the general public has come to expect things to be this easy. If they aren't just as easy (or easier) on Linux, the general public won't want it...
Just a thought.
So what? This is about APPS not about desktop if an app requires the support of all the kdelibs then so be it. If someone is willing to have that loaded up into RAM so what? And no, you are not "running kde" when someone is "running kde" they are using the kde desktop. I have a feeling that you are going to misunderstand this post, but so be it. -ron
Here it is, 3rd party vendors supporting the OS. And it (is supposed to) just work(s)!
I'm seriously impressed. Lexmark just went up to the front of the line in my future printer purchases if for no other reason than this.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Such things are already happening. Pick one, support it, add some value, make it what you want.
Do the one essential thing that E.S.R. mentions in Cathedral and Bazaar: Scratch your personal itch.
If printing is what is important to you, do something about it.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I would concur. Suse tends to have better out of the box no fuss no muss hardware support than other distros I have tried. When I installed Suse 7.1 everything got configured properly at the point of install. No printer problem, no nonsupported sound card problem... Suse makes it easier. Doing the same thing in Mandrake (the first Linux I installed) took me several hours of searching to find a driver that only sort of worked properly for my HP. I would of loved to of had a product to cut down that time for me so I could get right to work.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
My partner and I have an Officejet G55 -- a random all-in-one we got cheap at Staples which TurboPrint doesn't even support, along with any other OfficeJets -- hooked up to his Win98 box and shared out. While installing Mandrake Linux 8.0, I was able to choose it from a huge, well-organized selection of HP printers and set up the Samba connection (the installer called it something like a "Win95/NT networking connection") all without ever touching a command line. It printed a test page and everything was beautiful. Our past printers -- Deskjet 500, Deskjet 560C, Canon BJC-6000 -- have all worked with similar ease and they were all bought because they were cheap Windows-compatible printers.
That really makes 19 bucks for a tarball and command-line lpr look kinda stupid. What is this, 1994?