Printing a Linux Nightmare [LWN.net]

Printing a Linux Nightmare

Posted Feb 27, 2004 1:38 UTC (Fri) by hijab (guest, #4134)
In reply to: Printing a Linux Nightmare by vblum
Parent article: The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story (catb.org)

I don't understand some of my friends. Many of them use Fedora/Redhat/etc
and I hear stories like this about Samba, CUPS, etc..Yet they swear they
will never use SUSE because of some horror story they've had.

I've maintained 50 SUSE desktops (8.2 and 9.0 currently) and 2 SUSE
servers for about 4 years now. My experience with printing: lpr was a
nightmare, lprng was somewhat better, but when SUSE's implementation of
CUPS arrived, it was like a breath of fresh air. Everything worked.
Printing queues are set on the server,the clients just listen to the
server, so no reconfig for them when modifying/adding a printer. Of
course, I don't know maybe SUSE added some magic (YAST) that makes CUPS
work (it was even able to read the manufacturer's printer pdd file off
the CD-ROM), but it works and it works well.

BTW, we use KDEprint all the time (even in non-KDE apps), but I never was
confronted with a CUPS password or needed one, although I did have to add
cupsd:localhost to the hosts.allow file at one point.

Nobody says I have to use SUSE, nobody says I have to use Samba, nobody
says I have to use CUPS. I have other things to do with my life, I don't
want to constantly tinker with my systems.

I find the consistency of KDE so appealing that I use konqueror more than
99% of the time, maybe mozilla the other 1%. I understand ESR's
frustration; but, surely, having built his own masterpieces, he can
appreciate the value of software like Samba and CUPS.

Yes, perhaps the UI for CUPS is not ready for Aunt Tillie, but it sure is
usable by me, and hence by the 300-odd people who rely on my systems.

In case this needs to be said: Thank you CUPS for an outstanding piece of
work.

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cups password

Posted Feb 27, 2004 1:53 UTC (Fri) by vblum (guest, #1151) [Link]

SUSE 9.0 . If a user wishes to change the printer status from an incorrect "offline" to ready, that can be done using right-click on the printer in kdeprint. However, the action has no effect unless the user enters a valid cups password - which, by default, is different than the user's password.

This is better than it used to be - to reset the printer status, editing something evil in /etc/cups/bla bla was a valid way out. No longer, thanks to kdeprint, but for the password, I had to read some man pages.

Anyhow, CUPS works beautifully, but kdeprint really is a killer interface! _That_ really solved my Linux printing problems, in everyday use, which is much better than just the setup issue - it simply does the job!