Printing
CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) is the supported mechanism for connecting to printers on Void Linux.
As prerequisites, install the cups
package and enable the cupsd
service.
Wait until the service is marked available.
Installing Printing Drivers
If the printer is being accessed over the network and supports PostScript or
PCL, CUPS alone should be sufficient. However, additional driver packages are
necessary for local printer support. The cups-filters
package provides driver
support for CUPS.
Depending on the hardware in question, additional drivers may be necessary.
Some CUPS drivers contain proprietary or binary-only extensions. These are available only in the nonfree repository, and sometimes only for specific architectures.
Driverless printing
Most modern network printers support printing driverlessly using the IPP Everywhere standard. See https://www.pwg.org/printers/ for a list of self-certified printers supporting this standard. Even if a printer is not on this list, there is still a high chance it is supported.
Do note that cups-filters
is still required for driverless printing.
Gutenprint drivers
Gutenprint provides support for many printers. These drivers are contained in
the gutenprint
package.
HP drivers
Printers from Hewlett-Packard require the hplip
package.
Running the following command will guide you through the driver installation process. The default configuration selections it suggests are typically sufficient.
# hp-setup -i
Brother drivers
For Brother printer support, install the foomatic drivers, which are contained
in the foomatic-db
and foomatic-db-nonfree
packages. Support for various
laser models is provided by the brother-brlaser
package.
Drivers for Epson Inkjet printers
Install the epson-inkjet-printer-escpr
package for Epson Inkjet printers.
Canon PIXMA/MAXIFY drivers
The cnijfilter2
package contains drivers for various Canon PIXMA and MAXIFY
models. Please note that installing the driver package requires enabling the
"nonfree" repository.
Configuring a New Printer
CUPS provides a web interface and command line tools that can be used to configure printers. Additionally, various native GUI options are available and may be better suited, depending on the use-case.
Automatically
Printers with support for IPP Everywhere can be discovered and configured
automatically using ZeroConf. To enable this,
install the avahi
and nss-mdns
package and enable the avahi-daemon
service.
Web interface
To configure the printer using the CUPS web interface, navigate to
http://localhost:631 in a browser. Under the "Administration" tab, select
"Printers > Add Printer". When asked to log in, use an account that is in the
lpadmin
group.
Command line
The lpadmin(8) tool may be used to configure a printer using the command line.
Graphical interface
The system-config-printer
package offers simple and robust configuration of
new printers. Install and invoke it:
# system-config-printer
Normally this tool requires root privileges. However, if you are using
PolicyKit, you can install the cups-pk-helper
package to allow unprivileged
users to use system-config-printer
.
While system-config-printer
is shown here, your desktop environment may have a
native printer dialog, which may be found by consulting the documentation for
your DE.
Troubleshooting
USB printer not shown
The device URI can be found manually by running:
# /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb