Because many are still sceptical, I thought I should illustrate how easy it is to set up a networked printer in Fedora 13. Hopefully this process (as outlined here) will serve to change your mind on the difficulty of Linux and the state of Fedora. So, without further adieu, let’s set up a network printer in Fedora 13.

The printer in question

I am going to set up a Samsung ML-1710 laser printer attached to a print server (an Excito Bubba 2 device serves up the printers with the help of Samba) on a network and is used by multiple machines (both Linux and Mac OSes – sorry, no Windows here).

Prior to the latest releases, in order to get this printer working, the Splix drivers had to first be manually installed. This is no more – at least not manually).

Starting the process

Figure 1

To start the process of setting up a printer, click System > Administration > Printing to bring up the Printer administration tool (see Figure 1). From this window you need to click the Add button and select “Printer”. You will have to enter your root password to continue.  Depending upon the state of your firewall, this might open up a window informing you that changes must be made to your firewall to allow the detection of a network printer. Allow this to happen by clicking Adjust Firewall. You will then be asked for your root password once again.

Figure 2

The next window to appear is the New Printer window. Here you will expand the Network Printer selection (see Figure 2) and then select Find Network Printer. When you click that button you will need to enter the IP address of your printer server and then click the Find button. Once you have done that the tool will automatically add the necessary information for the printer location (see

Figure 3

Figure 3). Click the Verify button to make sure the printer information is correct. In my case I had to replace the host name with the IP address. I could have gotten around this by mapping the hostname to an IP address in the /etc/hosts file.

Once you have done this, click the Forward button and the drivers will automatically be detected and installed (if necessary). If your drivers must be installed, click the Install button (when prompted). The drivers will then be attached to the printer and you will be moved to another screen – printer description. The information in this window is all user-friendly, user-readable information. After you fill this out, click Apply, enter your root password, and click Print Test Page when prompted.

That’s it. You have successfully set up a networked printer in Linux. This process has come a long way from where it was just a few short years ago. And if you’re wondering why I chose setting up a network printer to show how user-friendly Fedora 13 has come, I did so because we all know how frustrating setting up a network printer can be. And since setting up a local printer is far easier, you can see that the addition of a printer to your Fedora 13 machine is now a process anyone can do.

The CUPS web administration tool is easy to work with and can be used on any distribution that has CUPS installed. In this article you will see how simple it is to add a printer to a Linux system via the CUPS web interface.

Getting and installing

Although CUPS is usually installed on most distibutions, it might be best to show how this printing system is installed. The easiest method is to open up the Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for “cups” (no quotes), select the results, and apply the changes. If you prefer the command line you can do something like this (from terminal window):

yum install cups

NOTE: You must have root privileges for the above.

sudo apt-get install cups

After the installation is complete, the cups daemon should start itself. If you find it has not you can start it with one of the following commands:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/cups start

NOTE: The above will require root privileges.

sudo /etc/init.d/cups start

Getting to and using the web interface

You might think you need a web server installed for this. You don’t. The CUPS system has its own server that will serve up the web interface, so you do not have to install Apache. To get to this interface open up your browser and enter:

http://localhost:631

Figure 1

The first page you will see will be that shown in Figure 1. From this page you can take care of all of your printer needs. You can manage print jobs, manage printers, create and manage printer classes, and read CUPS documentation.

In order to add a printer click on the Administration tab  and then click the Add Printer button (see Figure 2).

Figure 2

Once you click on the Add Printer button you will walk through a printer setup wizard. Most of the steps in this wizard should be fairly straight forward. Below is the list of the information you will need to supply for adding your printer:

Name: Name your printer (no spaces, “/”, or “#” characters).

Location: Human readable location for the printer.

Description: Human readable description of your printer.

Device: How the printer interfaces with your machine. This could be LPT, SCSI, AppSocket, Samba, Internet Printing Protocol, etc. If your printer is attached locally you will most likely see it in this listing.

Device URI: If you are using IPP you will need to supply this address which will look something like ipp://IP_ADDRESS_TO_PRINTER_SERVER/SPOOL

Where IP_ADDRESS_TO_PRINTER is the actual IP address for your printer server and SPOOL is the name of the spool your printer is attached to.

Make: The brand of your printer.

Model: The model of your printer.

During the last step (selecting the Model of your printer) you will click the button “Add Printer” at which point you will have to supply the username and password of the user who is allowed to make these changes. This will either be the root user or a your standard user (if using sudo).

Figure 3

Once the printer is added you will see it listed in the Printers tab. The listing of each printer (see Figure 3) will allow you take a number of actions on a printer including:

• Print test page
• Stop printer
• Reject jobs
• Move all jobs
• Cancel all jobs
• Unpublish printer
• Modify printer
• Set printer options
• Delete printer
• Set as default
• Set allowed users

Final thoughts

Setting up a printer in Linux is actually quite simple. And having a standardized interface means setting up a printer can be the same no matter what distribution you are using.