[cups.general] Does Linux Really Have No Printer Interfac?

[Matthias Czapla]

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 12:21:26AM +0000, jenninju at shu.edu wrote:
> OK. There is an elephant in the room.
> If I understand things correctly, setting up a printer in linux,
> whether via CUPS, LPR, or whatever, means you have an OS printer.
> 
> And that is all you have.
> 
> If you want to actually do some work, you have to configure each and
> every individual application, which in some cases is hard and other
> cases is easy.
> 
> With Windows, all of your apps can find the printers you set up with the OS.
> 
> What am I missing?

Nothing. In the past there were lots of different incompatible printing
systems for UNIX. That's exactly the problem CUPS is supposed to solve.
Once all the applications are updated to use CUPS, they will see all the
available printers automatically. Well, if I've understood it correctly
that is :)

Regards
Matthias