Printing In Fedora

Printing is obviously a very important part of using your Fedora desktop. Fortunately all Linux distributions have come a long way when it comes to hardware recognition. I use a Epson Stylus 960 which is a moderately common style of printer being used today. This printer allows me to print everything from family photos to large text documents. After plugging my into my computer via USB cord nothing happened. One press of the power button and Fedora 9 automatically (10 seconds later) recognized my printer, its make and model number.

At this point if i was to open up OpenOffice Writer or any text editor and print a document it would work just fine but i want to fine tune my printer while using it on my Fedora 9 desktop so that i works to the best of its ability while printing my requests. By clicking on the configure icon which appears on the Printer added message we can now see the Printer Configuration window. Across the top large icons allow us to add a new printer, add a new class, copy, delete, go to server, or refresh. to the left of this window we can see a list of printers on this system. By clicking on another printer we could change the configuration preferences for that printer. With my printer selected on the left we can see five tabs giving us many different options to change. The first tab, Settings, is where we can change the printers description, location, and other general information. We can also test our printer in the settings tab.

The Policies tab gives us the option to change the state of our printer, set policies, and create a starting and ending banner.

The Access Control tab lets us fine tune who can and can't use this printer.

Printer Options allows us to change just that. Here we can select general changes like Printout mode, media source, type of paper, the size of the paper you want to use and many more options. This area is important to change to your specific needs. for example if you print a text document but your media type is set to glossy paper, you'll be disappointed in the results.

the last tab, Job Options, lets us set common options like how many copies, orientation of the print, how many pages per side and more.

When you're finished you can select the Apply button at the bottom of the window or press the Revert options to restore the defaults upon opening the configuration options.