old-www/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO/x1597.htm

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><A
NAME="vendors"
></A
>Vendor Solutions</H1
><P
>This section is, by definition, incomplete. Feel free to send in
details of your favorite distribution.</P
><P
>There are a number of third-party packages out there designed to
make printer configuration under Unix easy. These are covered in <A
HREF="x1300.htm"
>the Section called <I
>How to set things up</I
></A
>; see the subsection there for your
particular spooling software for pointers.</P
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="rhs-filters-come-with-redhat"
></A
>Red Hat</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1604"
></A
><A
NAME="AEN1606"
></A
><P
>Red Hat has a GUI printer administration tool called printtool
which can add remote printers and printers on local devices. It
lets you choose a ghostscript-supported printer type and Unix
device file to print to, then installs a print queue in<TT
CLASS="filename"
>/etc/printcap</TT
> and uses a filter program from
the rhs-printfilters package to support postscript and other
common input types. This solution works fairly well, and is
trivial to setup for common cases.</P
><P
>Red Hat 6.x shipped a BSD LPD flavor; Red Hat 7.x and 8.0 appear to
default to using LPRng.</P
><P
>Where Red Hat 6.x and 7.x fail is when you have a printer which isn't
supported by their standard Ghostscript (which is GNU rather than
Aladdin Ghostscript, and which supports fewer printers). Check in
the printer compatibility list above (or <A
HREF="http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi"
TARGET="_top"
>online</A
>) if you find that you can't print properly with the stock Red
Hat software. If your printer isn't supported by Red Hat's tools,
you may need to install a contributed venison of Aladdin
Ghostscript, and will probably also be better off if you use the
lpdomatic or apsfilter packages, which know all about the printers
supported by late-model Ghostscripts, and others besides.</P
><P
>Red Hat 8.0 still installs LPRng by default although you can select CUPS. But even if you explicitly select only CUPS, LPRng is still installed. In Red Hat 8.1 CUPS will finally be the default spooler.</P
><P
>Red Hat 9.0 finally uses CUPS as default spooler.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="debian-what-comes-with"
></A
>Debian</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1618"
></A
><P
>Debian offers a choice between plain LPD, LPRng, or CUPS; LPRng or
CUPS are probably the better choices. PDQ is provided in the
unstable tree (currently called sid). Debian also offers a choice
of printer configuration tools; apsfilter version 5 or later is
probably your best bet, since that venison adds support for LPRng
and Ghostscript's uniprint driver scheme. Red Hat's printtool is
also supported, for those who like GUI administration tools.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="suse-what-comes-with"
></A
>SuSE</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1623"
></A
><A
NAME="AEN1625"
></A
><A
NAME="AEN1628"
></A
><P
>The printing system on SuSE Linux is based on apsfilter, with some
enhancements; SuSE's apsfilter will recognize all common file
formats (including HTML, if html2ps is installed). There are two
ways to setup printers on SuSE systems:<P
></P
><UL
><LI
><P
>YaST will let you configure "PostScript", "DeskJet" and "Other
printers", supported by Ghostscript drivers; it's also possible
to setup HP's GDI printers (DeskJet 710/720, 820, 1000, via the
"ppa" package). YaST will provide<TT
CLASS="filename"
>/etc/printcap</TT
> entries for every printer
("raw", "ascii", "auto" and "color", if the printer to
configure is a color printer). YaST will create spool
directories and it will arrange apsfilterrc files, where you're
able to fine tune some settings (Ghostscript preloads, paper
size, paper orientation, resolution, printer escape sequences,
etc.). With YaST it's also possible to setup network printers
(TCP/IP, Samba, or Novell Netware Printer).</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>In addition SuSE includes the regular SETUP program from the
original apsfilter package (with some enhancements); run<B
CLASS="command"
>lprsetup</B
> to invoke this configuration
script. Once you get accustomed to its GUI, you'll be able to
configure local and network printers.</P
></LI
></UL
></P
><P
>The SuSE installation manual explains both of these setup
procedures.</P
><P
>Wolf Rogner reported some difficulties with SuSE. Apparently the
following bugs may bite:<P
></P
><UL
><LI
><P
>Apsfilter's regular SETUP script is a bit broken, as are the
KDE setup tools. Use YaST. [ Ed: does this still apply? It's
been some time Wolf's report. ]</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>For networked printers that need to be fed from Ghostscript,
you'll need to first uncomment the line
REMOTE_PRINTER="remote" in <TT
CLASS="filename"
>/etc/apsfilterrc</TT
>. Then run YaST to
configure the printer and, under Network configurations, set up
a remote printer queue.</P
></LI
><LI
><P
>YaST's setup doesn't allow color laser printers, so configure a
mono printer and then change mono to color everywhere in the
printcap entry. You may have to rename the spool directory,
too.</P
></LI
></UL
></P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="caldera-what-comes-with"
></A
>Caldera</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1651"
></A
><A
NAME="AEN1653"
></A
><P
>Caldera ships LPRng. I have no idea what sort of setup tools they
offer.</P
><P
>I've just signed up a Caldera employee as a maintainer of the
LinuxPrinting.org database; evidently they plan to ship a CUPS and
Foomatic-based print system in future releases.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="corel-what-comes-with"
></A
>Corel</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1660"
></A
><A
NAME="AEN1662"
></A
><P
>Corel is Debian-based, so all the Debian facts above should still
apply. In addition, they've written their own setup
tool, based on the sysAPS library which in turn uses my database.
They've certainly done so as part of WordPerfect.</P
><P
>Corel operates a printing support newsgroup named <A
HREF="news://cnews.corel.com/corelsupport.linux.printing"
TARGET="_top"
>corelsupport.linux.printing</A
>. The bulk of the traffic
appears to be WordPerfect and Corel Linux related.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="mandrake-what-comes-with"
></A
>Mandrake</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1670"
></A
><A
NAME="AEN1672"
></A
><P
>As of version 7.2b1, Mandrake ships with CUPS standard. The
program QtCUPS is used to provide a clean GUI administration
interface. Till went to some trouble to include as many drivers
as possible, and they ship CUPS PPD files build with my own <A
HREF="http://www.linuxprinting.org/foomatic.html"
TARGET="_top"
>foomatic</A
>
interface code. Mandrake was the first distro to ship CUPS.</P
><P
>I think Earlier Mandrake versions shipped with the Red Hat
printtool.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="slackware-what-comes-with"
></A
>Slackware</H2
><A
NAME="AEN1680"
></A
><P
>Slackware ships with APS Filter. The apsfilter SETUP script is
installed as the command `apsfilterconfig'. You should be able to
get a reasonable setup by simply running that.</P
><P
>As of Slackware 9.0, CUPS is included in the extras dir of slackware but the default is still LPRng + APSFilter.</P
></DIV
><DIV
CLASS="sect2"
><H2
CLASS="sect2"
><A
NAME="other-dists"
></A
>Other Distributions</H2
><P
>Please send me info on what other distributions do!</P
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