Printer configuration

[Note]

You will need super-user privileges to configure a printer. See the section called “Root And Sudo”.

Configuring a new printer

  1. Launch ApplicationsSettingsPrinting

  2. Click on the New Printer button.

  3. A druid (aka wizard) will be presented to you that will guide you through setting up a new printer.

    [Note]

    After clicking forward, there may be a several minute wait.

Printer Configuration with the Terminal (Advanced Users)

To manage printers in the terminal, CUPS provides the commands lpadmin, lpinfo, lpoptions. Please refer to the CUPS online manual Managing Printers from the Command-Line for detailed information on how to use these commands.

To check if your printer has been detected correctly, do:

lpinfo -v

To add a printer, do something similar to:

lpadmin -p DeskJet -E -v parallel:/dev/lp1 -m deskjet.ppd

[Note]

If you experience problems getting your printer to work, you may consider installing gnome-cups-manager. It is available by the usual manner described in the section called “Adding, Removing and Updating Applications” and will offer a nice graphical tool to set up your printer. WARNING: installing gnome-cups-manager will bring in many dependencies to the Gnome desktop, thus increasing the installed size of your system. It is therefore not recommended to install gnome-cups-manager on Xubuntu. In some cases, however, it may be worth the trade-off to get your printer working.