Connecting Ubuntu Linux to a networked printer

by Hamish Taylor

Friday, 08 August 2008

Page 1 of 2 ! In my last article I talked about connecting Ubuntu Linux to Windows shares . In this article I will talk about the way that I connected to my networked printer. When I first connected an HP Inkjet 3550 printer to my laptop, it was easier to get it working than in Windows! The driver for the printer was already available in Linux, so all I had to do was select it and the printer worked.   From memory, that was as easy as going to the System menu, clicking on Printing, clicking on New, waiting for the system to search for new printers. It found the printer and I had to select the HP Inkjet 3500 printer driver (its a generic driver, which covers the 3550). That was it!   However, as that printer aged and finally died, I needed to replace it. I decided to replace it with a laser printer. At the time (earlier this year) Samsung were running out their base laser printer the CLP-300. They also had a cheap price for the networked version the CLP-300N. I bought myself one of those, so then I didn't need to connect USB cables each time I wanted to print something.   As a comparison, how difficult is it to connect to this networked printer from within Windows? Let me save this article so far, boot into Windows XP and check it out for you!   Going to Start, Control Panel, Printers, Add A Printer brings up the dialog to add a printer. Select Network printer. Click Next to begin the process. If I Browse for the printer it will not pick it up (which is a gentle reminder to make sure that the printer is ON during this process!). Trying again after I turn the printer on reveals the same thing, mostly as the printer doesn't support being part of a Microsoft workgroup.   However I have given it a fixed IP address and a hostname on my network. So I can use the second option in the Add A Printer dialog to manually type in the IP address and hostname in the form: \\10.0.0.1\printername.   For some unknown reason in Windows XP, this does not want to work. Having worked in Windows networking for a decade I am not sure why. Does anyone have any ideas? I'd love to know, but I assume that it has something to do with the setup of the printer itself. Now I have to try adding this printer as a local printer using an IP address port. This is getting a little more complex.   So going back to the beginning again, I select Start, Control Panel, Printers, Add A Printer and, unintuitively as it is not a local but a networked printer, tick the Local Printer box and untick automatically find it. I click Next. I click to Create a new port, use the drop down menu to select Standard TCP/IP port. I click Next twice. I type in the IP address of the printer. I leave the port name that it creates alone. I use the default device type which is Generic Network Card. I click Next then I click Finish.   Now we have to locate the driver. The driver for this printer is not pre-installed in Windows XP, so we have to use the CD or download it from the Samsung website which is an 8.2 MB download.   Once I have downloaded and extracted it, I click on Have Disk and then Browse so I can select the directory where the relevant .inf file is. For me that is the 32 bit version, so I can ignore the 64 bit directory. Once I have selected the right directory it suggests that sugg1.inf is the right file. I click OK, assuming that it knows best. We're not done yet, so please read onto Page 2 to find out more...   << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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