Evening all,

After a few months of apathy, I've decided I should finally get my printer
up and running in Slack 9.1. The printer is an HP 820CXi, and I can get
drivers/filters/call-them-what-you-will from linuxprinting.org.

My question is: What print system should I use? I've been recommended CUPS
by a couple of folks, but LPD is the default on slack (CUPS and Kprint are
also installed, perhaps more too)

Now, I imagine CUPS is good, (else noone would have recommended it to me),
but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
isn't it the default?

Anyway, from googling, I can't seem to find any comparisons between the
two, and am at a loss as to which one to use. Can anyone point me to a
comparison, or give me any advice on which to choose? (FYI - the printer
is local to the slack 9.1 box, and i'll want to share it (samba etc) with
a windows box, possibly another slack box, and hopefully a Mac OSX machine
(when I can afford it!))

(slap me if I'm being stupid!)
Cheers,

sb

--
Remove spamtrap to reply by email.

standardblue wrote:


> Now, I imagine CUPS is good, (else noone would have recommended it to me),
> but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
> isn't it the default?

I don't know about 10.0 but in 9.1 there is no 'default.' If you do nothing,
the installer will install both lpring and cups.... and this is a "bad" thing
as they can interfere with each other. You should only install one OR the
other (you can use pkgtool to remove both and install just the one you want.)

I'm sure others will disagree, but I've found CUPS to be very solid. It
dovetails with KDE "printer" very easily.... seamlessly. I vote CUPS very
enthusiastically.... but as always, YMMV.

Al C.

standardblue wrote:

>
> Evening all,
>
> After a few months of apathy, I've decided I should finally get my printer
> up and running in Slack 9.1. The printer is an HP 820CXi, and I can get
> drivers/filters/call-them-what-you-will from linuxprinting.org.
>
> My question is: What print system should I use? I've been recommended CUPS
> by a couple of folks, but LPD is the default on slack (CUPS and Kprint are
> also installed, perhaps more too)
>
> Now, I imagine CUPS is good, (else noone would have recommended it to me),
> but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
> isn't it the default?
>
> Anyway, from googling, I can't seem to find any comparisons between the
> two, and am at a loss as to which one to use. Can anyone point me to a
> comparison, or give me any advice on which to choose? (FYI - the printer
> is local to the slack 9.1 box, and i'll want to share it (samba etc) with
> a windows box, possibly another slack box, and hopefully a Mac OSX machine
> (when I can afford it!))
>
> (slap me if I'm being stupid!)
> Cheers,
>
> sb
>


I would more that likely go with cups. It is a little easier to set up in
slackware with web interface. It can be a little trouble configuring all
the applications to use the cups server. If you change in the printer
manager to use the cups server then that will take care of most of the
KDE-applications, but you still have the third part applications. If you
change the print command for these other applications to 'kprinter' or
'lp-cups' then it should do the job. This is how I did it and its reall a
preference of the user, but then again thats the only answer that can be
given for your question. I'm no expert so anyone feel free to correct any
incorrectness in my post.

standardblue wrote:

>
> Evening all,
>
> After a few months of apathy, I've decided I should finally get my printer
> up and running in Slack 9.1. The printer is an HP 820CXi, and I can get
> drivers/filters/call-them-what-you-will from linuxprinting.org.
>
> My question is: What print system should I use? I've been recommended CUPS
> by a couple of folks, but LPD is the default on slack (CUPS and Kprint are
> also installed, perhaps more too)
>
> Now, I imagine CUPS is good, (else noone would have recommended it to me),
> but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
> isn't it the default?
>
> Anyway, from googling, I can't seem to find any comparisons between the
> two, and am at a loss as to which one to use. Can anyone point me to a
> comparison, or give me any advice on which to choose? (FYI - the printer
> is local to the slack 9.1 box, and i'll want to share it (samba etc) with
> a windows box, possibly another slack box, and hopefully a Mac OSX machine
> (when I can afford it!))
>
>

CUPS has a good reputation for ease of interface, however it also has a much
poorer reputation for security. There's been nothng of late but about2
years ago there was a string of security patches.

I went with lprng just for classicist/educational reasons (we're talking
about Slackware, right?). It was actually pretty easy config on my
Slack 9.1; Apsfilter is the tool you want to use. See
/usr/doc/apsfilter...; you'll eventually run /usr/share/apsfilter/SETUP
(as root).

-dt

Keith Matthews wrote:
> standardblue wrote:
>
>
>>Evening all,
>>
>>After a few months of apathy, I've decided I should finally get my printer
>>up and running in Slack 9.1. The printer is an HP 820CXi, and I can get
>>drivers/filters/call-them-what-you-will from linuxprinting.org.
>>
>>My question is: What print system should I use? I've been recommended CUPS
>>by a couple of folks, but LPD is the default on slack (CUPS and Kprint are
>>also installed, perhaps more too)
>>
>>Now, I imagine CUPS is good, (else noone would have recommended it to me),
>>but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
>>isn't it the default?
>>
>>Anyway, from googling, I can't seem to find any comparisons between the
>>two, and am at a loss as to which one to use. Can anyone point me to a
>>comparison, or give me any advice on which to choose? (FYI - the printer
>>is local to the slack 9.1 box, and i'll want to share it (samba etc) with
>>a windows box, possibly another slack box, and hopefully a Mac OSX machine
>>(when I can afford it!))
>>
>>
>
>
> CUPS has a good reputation for ease of interface, however it also has a much
> poorer reputation for security. There's been nothng of late but about2
> years ago there was a string of security patches.

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On 2004-09-04, standardblue <standardblue@nooo-spam-pleeaaassseee.yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Now, I imagine CUPS is good, (else noone would have recommended it to me),
> but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
> isn't it the default?

CUPS irritates me to no end. I hate that you have to configure it for
a network printer. LPRng (which is the default in Slackware 10; the
traditional BSD lpd has not been in Slackware for some time) has a nifty
feature where, if you already have an lpd queue on your network, then
without any modifications whatsoever you can do

PRINTER=lp@myprinter lpr filename.ps

and have it work. Of course, you still need to configure at least one
lpd daemon on the network; if your printer has an ethernet interface,
you're done. Otherwise, I haven't found it to be too much of a problem
to configure a PostScript printer with LPRng. (I can't help much with
non-PS printers, sorry.)

- --keith

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On 2004-09-04, standardblue <standardblue@nooo-spam-pleeaaassseee.yahoo.com> wrote:

> but there must be a reason LPD is the default. If CUPS is so good, why
> isn't it the default?

I suspect because LPR is still compatible with more machines than the
younger CUPS. I'm also installing a new printer, a Brother 1440 b/w laser.
And while Brother is kicking ass in trying to be Linux compliant, not all
their models have reached the golden rung. Checking their support site and
the CUPS website, I see only LPR drivers available for my model at this
time.

nb