Sunday, February 3, 2013

Adding printer, Ubuntu 12.04

Adding a printer is one of the most annoying tasks I've dealt with.  It doesn't help that there are dozens of printing protocols and ways to connect to a printer. Here is a step-by-step to remind myself of this process.
  1. From terminal, run sudo system-config-printer
  2. In the dialog box that opens, press Add
  3. Enter the device URI
    • e.g. socket://172.25.102.32
  4. It'll ask for a driver, you can see if it's available from the drop down menus but this is unlikely from my experience. Usually, you'll just have to find and provide the .ppd file yourself.
  5. Accept the installable options and device name etc...
  6. print a test page! Hopefully it works. If not, get angry and continue your quest across the internets.
Happy printing! 
(I'm going to hate myself for the cheery ending when this doesn't work)