As a writer, the only reason Ed Hurst ever got his first computer was because it was far more efficient than a typewriter, and certainly more readable than his own handwriting. To enjoy that efficiency, however, you need a working printer, and Ed explores accomplishing just that on FreeBSD in this piece.
Desktop FreeBSD Part 4: Printing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Quote:
Here is a list of what you’ll need for most printers:
* apsfilter
* psutils-letter
* curl
* perl
* ghostscript-gnu
* cups-base
* cups-pstoraster
* gimp-print
* libijs
* foomatic-db
That’s alot of freaking crap to install just to get a damn printer working. I know some of which you don’t really need and others you might have already in your system, but still that’s alot of stuff. You can elminate all that stuff mentioned if you use a PostScript printer. The drawback though is that PostScript printers are expensive.
I have my FreeBSD box at work setup to print to a Canon imageRunner series copier/printer using drivers from Codehost. The Canon imageRunners are copiers that also do network printing. The Codehost drivers are pretty awesome, but they only work for Canon imageRunner copier/printers. They’re self installing so they’re pretty easy to use. Here’s a link to that: http://canon.codehost.com/
I have also setup my FreeBSD box at work to printer to a HP LaserJet 2100. That printer has a JetDirect card in it which makes things just a bit easier. That printer is PCL only. Basically what I do is print only text files to it. The JetDirect card has a feature in it that will fix the cr-lf problem with printing text files.
Here’s a bit of my /etc/printcap file for the above scenario:
lp|local line printer:
:sh:
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:
:rm=192.168.0.37:
:rp=auto:
:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:
It’s pretty simple. This should give an idea of how easy it is to setup a printcap file. Granted there’s no filters being used since it’s ASCII text only. I like JetDirects alot because then you can have printer messages sent to you syslog daemon.
The best printing (I should say spooling) system I’ve ever seen is on an iSeries (AS/400). Too bad all our system does is generate boring business reports. But it’s nice that I can start, restart, cancel print jobs. Yeah that’s pretty basic, but I can also move spooled files to different out queues, save spooled files, move spooled files to a text file, print ranges of pages, restart at a certain page, and more. Also helps to have twinax printers too.
And, I thought simple is when I plug in a printer to my computer and click on the print button and it prints.
disclaimer: I am not a troll..
Under FreeBSD 4.x (and also linux), we use a Konica 7020 with Postscript support and an ethernet add-in card. Print setup is very easy :
% more /etc/printcap
# /etc/printcap
#
lp|Konica:
:sh:
:rm=PRINTERIPGOESHERE
:sd=/var/spool/output/konica
:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:
:mx#0:
:rp=lp:
Printing non-postscript documents is also easy using “a2ps”, for example :
%cat /etc/printcap | a2ps | lpr
Don’t you just love network printers? They’re grrrreat!!
By the way, what’s the mx#0 do? Off the top of my head, does that remove the banner page? I forgot. I guess I have to go check the man page.
Ah, mx is for max file size. Okay, I somehow remember that some network adapters freak out on the file size or something like that. Although, I have forgotten what the deal was. Or is it a limitation of lpd. It’s been such a long time since I’ve had to setup this stuff. Usually, after I set things up I don’t mess with them ever again since they rarely break. You know what I mean?
And, I thought simple is when I plug in a printer to my computer and click on the print button and it prints.
I don’t know anything about Macs, but under Windows at least you still need to fiddle a bit to get the printer working. You don’t just plug it in. Comments like these only highlight your trollishness.
Trust me, I’ve got 6 printers (one network printer). I have never ever had to “fiddle” with anything. The -worst- thing I had to do, was inser a CD with a strange and old Cannon Model (it’s in the office, can’t remember its model now).
Some (3 to be exact) are USB printers, plug and *pray*. Prayers answered, in a matter of 4 seconds the printer was available and shared.
The other, PPT printer, also needed a driver which I downloaded from internet (because it was newer then the one which shipped on the CD). Other than that, I could’ve spent 10 minutes setting and sharing 6 printers.
Oh and I forgot the network printer… not much to say about it, via www->ip.of.the.printer. Tweak a few settings, and installing it was a matter of two more minutes (windows Found it).
So overall, installing printers in windows FOR ME, it has always been very simple. Always.
With BSD/Linux I have had experienced minor/major troubles from time to time. Don’t know about CUPS, never used it. (the last time I configured a printer under linux was when RedHat 7 was available, and I shared 2 printers with samba). Not complicated, but we had some glitches.
Hmm… the last time I installed FreeBSD at work (version 5.2.1), all I had to do was install KDE, and then open up KDE Print Manager, do a network scan for printers, and then for any printer I choose to add to my printer list, either choose the generic HP driver for PCL printers, or the generic Postscript driver for postscript printers. I’d say that borders on the same simplicity as Windows. Oh… and er… Windows doesn’t scan for printers on the network.
Given that FreeBSD automatically resolves dependencies when you install software, KDE automatically results in CUPS and a basic printer driver database. You can always add the extended database with Foomatic if you want.
That only works for network printers, though. I’m right now in the interesting position that my (PCL-happy Oki) printer is shared (by samba) to some windows PCs, but I can’t print on the FreeBSD box it’s connected to.
I guess I should get around to reading this article
This is a bit OT, but why does out-of-the-box printing quality differ so widely among Linux distributions? They all use essentially the same print chain, so what’s going on?
A regular Slackware user, I found the Slack 10 produced pretty sloppy hardcopy on my hardware. So, I’ve tried a number of other distributions, keeping each installation as identical as possible. In each case, I used KDE 3.2.3, CUPS, and Ghostscript. Some distributions made it easy to install a printer, others made it difficult.
More importantly, when I printed identical files from each distribution, the appearance of the hard copy was not identical. Why?
>>>And, I thought simple is when I plug in a printer to my >>>computer and click on the print button and it prints.
>>>disclaimer: I am not a troll..
Apples to oranges folks. We all know that printing on windows is easy to setup, especially since printer manufacturers make driver cds specifically for windows. I don’t know of a single printer manufacturer with an install cd for freebsd.
Simple printing is not why we choose to use freebsd, though I have to admit I was Never able to get my Lexmark Z22 to repond using lpd. A network printer is almost a requirement with freebsd, and forget about any cheap inkjet from Lexmark!