Chapter 16: Setting Up Printers and Printing

In This Chapter

  • Understanding printing in Linux
  • Setting up printers
  • Using printing commands
  • Managing document printing
  • Sharing printers

Very few people need to print all the time, but when they do want to print something, they usually need it quickly. Setting up a print server and sharing printers can save you money by eliminating the need for a printer at every workstation. Some of those savings can be used to buy printers that can output more pages per minute or provide higher-quality output.

You can attach printers to your Fedora system to make them available to users of that system or to other computers on the network. You can configure your Fedora printer as a remote CUPS printer or Samba printer (emulating a Windows print server).

This chapter describes configuring and using printers in Fedora. It focuses on Common Unix Printing Service (CUPS), which is the recommended print service for the current versions of Fedora. To configure CUPS printers, this chapter focuses on the Printer Configuration window (system-config-printer command).

When a local printer is configured, print commands (such as lpr) are available for carrying out the actual printing. Commands also exist for querying print queues (lpq), manipulating print queues (lpc), and removing print jobs (lprm). A local printer can also be shared to users on other computers on your network if you set up your Linux system as a print server.

Common Unix Printing Service

CUPS ...

Get Fedora® Bible 2011 Edition: Featuring Fedora® Linux® 14 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.