Chapter 6. Printing and Managing Print Jobs


Over the years, Linux has had several printing systems, including the venerable Line Printer Daemon (LPD) and LPR Next Generation (LPRng) that are still found in vestigial form on modern Linux distributions. In the past few years, however, most distributions have settled on the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) as their backend of choice. CUPS is well supported, easy to use, modern, and a perfect drop-in replacement for LPD and LPRng. The same commands used with LPD and LPRng still work, but now they call functions in CUPS.

This chapter focuses on CUPS because it is the printing system with which most Linux users work. This chapter does not cover how to set up and configure a printer. Most distributions now provide easy-to-use GUI configuration tools to do just that, so you're going to focus on actually querying and using the printer via the command line.

Note

Linux Journal's "Overview of Linux Printing Systems," available at www.linuxjournal.com/article/6729, provides an excellent look at the various options Linux users have today, with special focus on the current favorite, CUPS. For more on CUPS, see Linux Journal's "The CUPS Printing System" at www.linuxjournal.com/article/8618, a very good look at this essential technology. The best place to go for information about CUPS is, unsurprisingly, the CUPS Software Users Manual, which you can find at www.cups.org/doc-1.1/sum.html. It's long and sometimes obtuse, but full of valuable advice and help, and it's an essential resource.




Linux Phrasebook
Linux Phrasebook
ISBN: 0672328380
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 288

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