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Jonni Bidwell has nowt to do with the subs dept.

Q Printer blues

In looking at the new printers from HP and Epson, I notice that none of the new printers have software drivers for Linux. The Linux Foundation Open Printing site has not been updated to include any new printers either. That suggests that one needs a Windows 10 PC with Vendor Printer Utility drivers to maintain new printers.

So what’s the best way to set up a Linux PC to print files to a Windows 10 PC when both PC have their own firewall software to block external traffic? It would be helpful if Linux Format could do an article with step-by-step instructions on how to set this up.

Gary Hedquist

A For a print magazine I suppose it is odd that we don’t talk about printers more, or indeed use them on Linux more. Although to be honest IT wouldn’t let us connect a mysterious Linux box to their fancy corporate network printers.

For home use it all really depends on the printer, so it’s hard to do an all-encompassing tutorial that would benefit (or even be of interest to) everyone. Be that as it may, the concept of “driverless” printing has taken hold in Linux. Most consumer printers will do pretty well out of the box in Ubuntu-based distributions There’s a lot going on behind the scenes for this to work, involving protocols such as Apple’s AirPrint or IPP Everywhere. See the gory details for yourself at https://wiki.debian.org/CUPSDriverlessPrinting. Apple’s stewardship of CUPS is beneficial in a lot of ways.