On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 12:57:20PM -0500, Ted Unangst wrote: > On Sat, Jan 29, 2011 at 11:48 PM, Bryan <bra...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I have been hampered with this for a few years now, and at most times, > > it was easier to copy the file to a Windows box and print. But I'm > > tired of having to do this, and have begun researching how to print to > > a printer on the network. I recently bought a Brother 9840CDW, which > > supports lpd and postscript. It also allows for FTP of files to queue > > among other things. It's probably more printer (scanner, fax, copier) > > than I need, but I'm tired of HP printers and the toner issues they > > have. It is a really nice printer in Windows, and the scanner is most > > excellent and fast. And according to the LInux foundation site > > (http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/openprinting) > > it works perfectly. Of course, I have to take this with a grain of > > salt, because of Linux's willingness to add proprietary drivers, > > firmware, etc. > > While I think it's possible to print using lpd, and people have done > it, I found it to be about 10x easier to install cups and use that.
cups may be a little eaier to set up, but when I used it a lot, it was an endless source of headaches to keep running. > You go to localhost:631, type in the printer's name, upload a ppd file > downloaded from linuxprinting, and done. careful. those downloaded ppds may expect a different configuration of software packages than what's in OpenBSD's packages. ppds and the tools to create them are provided in the OpenBSD packages collection. > You can make lpd and postscript work if you know how they work, but > figuring things out if you don't can take a long time. foomatic is pretty easy to set up. basically any printer that is supported by any kind of "free" software will work. check out openprinting.org's printer database. (the foomatic developers are also responsible for openprinting.org.) it'll tell you what you need to print with your printer. then follow the directions (i.e. basically cut-n-paste) in /usr/local/share/doc/pkg-readmes/foomatic-*. I've used lpd/foomatic for epson and hp printers (gutenprint and hpijs/hplip drivers). often people claim they only work with cups, but this is simply not true. fwiw, cups uses foomatic internally. that's how it supports all those printers. -- jake...@sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
