Hello my name is Andrew Gee and welcome to this Ubuntu screencast.
In this screencast I am going to tell you how to work out whether your printer is supported in Linux
and how to set up your printer in Ubuntu.
Go ahead and log in to your Ubuntu desktop,
entering your username and password as usual.
This is a basic 7.04 (also known as Feisty Fawn) installation
and the first thing we are going to do is go over to the open printing website.
So load up firefox and in the address bar type http://openprinting.org
The website will load.
Click the printers link to head over to the printer database.
Here you will see two drop down boxes.
In the first one select the make of your printer,
in the second select the model,
mine is an HP Deskjet 6127.
Press the show button,
that will send you over to the printer's page.
Here you can see two pieces of information,
my printer works perfectly under Linux and
that I should use the hpijs driver.
Now that I know this, I can go and see what it would look like
if my printer was not supported in Linux.
Here you can see
that's would it would look like if it looks perfectly,
where everything works.
Mostly, is where most things work, apart from advanced modes.
Partially, is where it wouldn't work that well
and you probably get bad printouts.
And the last one is paperweight where it doesn't work at all.
Now that we know that, we can go and install the printer
so go to System, Administration, Printing,
that will load this dialogue.
Double-click on New Printer, that will load the dialogue.
Here you can see that my printer has been detected.
If your printer has not been detected, you can click this option button here,
and choose where your printer is connected.
If you have a network printer that was not detected,
click the network printer option box,
choose what type of printer you have
and then change the connection options underneath.
As my printer has been detected, I will continue with that.
The next page shows you what driver you should be using.
In the first box you select the manufacturer,
then you choose the model
and it picks the driver for you,
hpijs, which is what the website recommended.
I can also select a different one if I want or
I can install a driver if I have the correct .PPD file.
Now that is done, I can press forward
In this box I can name my printer,
you can not put spaces, as that would be invalid.
You can also put a description and location
although this isn't needed.
Click apply and your printer will be added
and you can see it there.
Now we need to test the printer, so right click on it
go to properties
and that will load a dialogue that looks like this.
Then click print test page button,
that will send a test page off to the printer.
That should come out of the printer
Now press Close.
Now I'm going to show you how to print from an application,
so I'm going to load up Open Office
and open up a sample document.
Here is my sample document,
I can print it by going to File, Print,
making sure my printer is selected
and I can change any other options,
then press Ok.
That is then sent off to the printer and it will print out.
Thanks for watching this screencast,
find more at screencasts.ubuntu.com