Linux Journal: Taming the Horrors of Printers and Printing, Part 1

“This week, I am going to wander into frightening territory.
Over the years, I have seen several estimates regarding system
administrators and printers. One figure (which had a fairly strong
argument backing up the numbers) put printer administration at
around 25 percent of a system administrator’s time. If you
think printers are fun, try wandering by your tech support people’s
cubicles (assuming you are not one yourself), and waiting for a
printer call to come through. You shouldn’t have to wait too long.
Next, note the look on their faces when they’re told it’s a printer
problem.“

“I’ve sort of avoided dealing with printers myself (although
some of you have sent me requests to cover the topic). The reason
is that, like most system administrators, I also hate dealing with
printers. In the next few columns, I will show how you can make
printer hell closer to printer heaven. In doing this, I’ll walk you
through the basics of what really happens when you print. Armed
with the nuts and bolts of printing, we will then look at some
clever tools and techniques that add unprecedented flexibility to
your everyday printing needs.”

“Linux offers us a number of printing options. We can do text,
Postscript, local printers as well as lpd remotes. If we want to,
we can even create queues that direct printing to our co-workers’
Windows 9x printers, or provide Windows 9x users with Linux print
services (using Samba). One printer is mostly okay, but add a few
more and you’ve got yourself a real handful. What Linux does do
here is provide a wide range of options for dealing with all this
diversity.”

Complete
Story