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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."
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.
I love it when people post without actually making sure that they read the article correctly.
You do not have to give command line options to set printing modes, the author just decided it would be easier for him to enable different modes as different printers. If you simply want to change printing modes, you can use a graphical method similar to that used by Windows or Mac OS.
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.
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
You obviously have not tried Windows 2000/XP etc.
The simple fact is almost every printer out there works with these OS's, out of the box. That is important.
Plug-n-play means you get a dialog box, and half the time the driver is already loaded with windows, otherwise you can use the supplied diskette.
Users are comfortable and familiar with this system, and it work 90% of the time nowadays. I havn't had a problem recently on a whole range of systems and printers.
Now, getting printing going under Linux is NO WHERE near that easy. Vendor supplied disks don't have drivers, and linux simply has a smaller driver base than windows overall.
That your rather silly post got modded up indicates that most people reading slashdot don't actually have to support computer installations or havn't actually used linux to print. The fact is for things like printers which require large driver bases, Windows with its monopoly power has linux beat.
So please, get a clue before posting.
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)
" You obviously have not tried Windows 2000/XP etc. "
Or maybe he's just used NT/95/98 more. What is the Win2k/XP installed base? 10%?
"The simple fact is almost every printer out there works with these OS's, out of the box. That is important."
I've run into just as many printers that don't work right under Win2k as under Linux.
"Plug-n-play means you get a dialog box, and half the time the driver is already loaded with windows, otherwise you can use the supplied diskette. "
At which point you either use the drivers built into Windows and give up 2/3 of the printer's feature set or you use the drivers that came on the cd only to find that they are badly broken.
"linux simply has a smaller driver base than windows overall."
Not really, remember that a single driver on Linux may work with dozens of different printers. The actual number of printers supported is probably pretty similar.
"That your rather silly post got modded up indicates that most people reading slashdot don't actually have to support computer installations or havn't actually used linux to print."
Frankly I think you either arn't all that experienced yourself or your convienently forgetting about the times Win2k has failed to work right with a printer.
Um, CUPS does not use "its own rasterizing program", it uses GNU Ghostscript with the "cups" driver which outputs a generic raster stream that can be configured as needed by the printer driver (i.e. the driver can say it needs a 6-color image at 720 DPI, and Ghostscript will generate it through the cups driver)
We include a version of Ghostscript with CUPS because 1) most non-Linux operating systems don't come with Ghostscript pre-installed, and 2) the standard Ghostscript is bug-filled and doesn't come with that all-important cups driver compiled in. See the ESP Ghostscript project on SourceForge for a more generic replacement that can be configured with the standard Ghostscript drivers + cups.
CUPS also provides an image file RIP which provides faster/better image printing than is possible with Ghostscript.
Similarly, the GNOME folks could provide a rasterizer for GNOME metafiles that would be used for printing - the metafiles are generally a more compact representation than PostScript, and would provide faster printing for clients in a network configuration.
In short, it is the very design of CUPS that will allow it to support a wide variety of devices and applications today and in the future.
I print, therefore I am.