Chapter 21. Printing
Printing is one of those things that’s invisible when it’s working, but incredibly annoying when it isn’t. Printing issues, like getting your computer to recognize your printer, can be challenging across operating systems. For the most part, printing on Linux simply works. You plug in your printer, you configure it, and you’re all set. But that doesn’t make for a very long or exciting chapter. So the rest of this chapter is going to be about solving the challenges of printing that come up on Linux.
Why is printing a challenge across operating systems? Most of the challenge comes from printer drivers. Remember drivers from chapter 4? Drivers are the software that allow the operating system, or the Linux kernel, in our case, to talk to your hardware—in this case, the printer.
When the drivers aren’t working, your computer can’t talk to your printer. And that’s where you run into problems. But the problems are fixable. It’s not hard—it’s mostly trial and error, as you’ll see.
In this chapter, we’re going to explore printing, learning about: