[lug] CHANGING Printers in Linux

[Michael J. Hammel]

Thus spoke David Willcox
> Does anyone happen to know if there's a simple way to change your Lp =
> printer from
> say Okidata 320 to a Deskjet HP or other varous types?=20

Simple is relative.  Do you consider writing your own print filters easy?  :-)

Desktop printer configuration for Linux (or Unix in general) is, to be
polite, wanting of improvement.  I tried a commercial package from
Easy Software called ESP Print Pro.  It has a graphical interface for
configuring printers, both locally and across a network.  It was one of the
better printer solutions I've seen, but when I tried it there were a number
of bugs.  I don't know if the released version has fixed these or not (I
haven't had a chance to try the new versions).  The bugs were UI related,
not functionality related, ie the graphical display had some problems.

GNOME and KDE are working on generic printer interfaces which should make
printer configuration easier in the future, but for now, it takes a modest
understanding of the lower level printing subsystem (lpr, lpd, etc).  RH
5.2 has a graphical interface to /etc/printcap that works pretty well, but
if your printed has some odd characteristics that requires special commands
to ghostscript, you need some lower level knowledge.  I don't know if the
6.0 versions still have this feature or not.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel           |
The Graphics Muse           |   Books we'll never see:
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org  |      "George Foreman's Big Book of Baby Names"
http://www.graphics-muse.com