This section is, by definition, incomplete. Feel free to send in
details of your favourite distribution. At the moment, I am aware of
no distribution that supports, or even provides, the software I
recommend: PDQ.
For a while, there were several packages out there all trying to make
printer configuration with regular lpd easier. They probably all
still exist, but one of the best and most up-to-date is Andreas
Klemm's APS Filter package, which has a menu-driven printcap
configurator and handles practically any type of input imaginable. If
your vendor doesn't ship a nice printer setup tool, APS Filter is
another choice; several distributions include apsfilter, or it's an
easy add-on.
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 /etc/printcap and
uses the magic 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.
Where Red Hat fails 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
online) 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 verison of Aladdin
Ghostscript, and will probably also be better off if you use the
apsfilter package, which knows all about the printers supported by
late-model Ghostscripts.
In future versions of Red Hat the printtool will be reimplemented to
support a larger list of printers and with the intent to support an
eventual rhs-printfilters replacement (the current filter has
difficultly with many common printers like some non-PCL DeskJets and
most Lexmarks). Some VA Linux-developed PPD features may be
incorporated, as well.
Debian offers a choice between plain lpd and LPRng; LPRng is probably
a better choice. I believe Debian also offers a choice of printer
configuration tools; apsfilter version 5 or later is probably your
best bet, since that verison adds support for LPRng and Ghostscript's
uniprint driver scheme.
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:
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; at this moment b/w only). YaST will provide /etc/printcap
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).
In addition there's the regular SETUP program from the original
apsfilter package (with some enhancements); run `lprsetup' to
invoke this configuration script. Once you get accustomed to its
GUI, you'll be able to configure quickly local and network printers
(with local filtering via the "bypass" feature - that's
quite handy).
The SuSE installation manual explains both of these setup procedures.
Wolf Rogner reported some difficulties with SuSE. Apparently the
following bugs may bite:
Apsfilter's regular SETUP script is a bit broken, as are the
KDE setup tools. Use YaST.
For networked printers that need to be fed from Ghostscript,
you'll need to first uncomment the line REMOTE_PRINTER="remote"
in /etc/apsfilterrc. Then run YaST to configure the printer
and, under Network configurations, set up a remote printer
queue.
YaST's setup doesn't allow color laser printers, so configure a
mono printer and then change mono to color everwhere in the
printcap entry. You may have to rename the spool directory,
too.
