Printing and Scanning 

Printing

Configuring printers in PCQLinux 8.0 is quite simple. Launch the System Settings>Printing tool, which opens a printer configuration tool for you. To add new printer, select “New” from its tool bar, which runs a wizard to add a new printer on your PCQLinux machine. After lunching the wizard, it will ask for a queue name and type of print setup (local, Unix, Windows or Novell printer). Select the printer according to your requirements, for instance, if the printer is connected to your machine’s parallel port, select Local Printer, and click forward. This sets the print device as /dev/lp0. 

If you have a printer elsewhere on a network, then you need to use one of the other printer setup options mentioned above.

The wizard in this case asks you for the printer driver, and also for the print queue name or the print server name. PCQLinux 8.0 provides a very large number of printer drivers for the printers available in the market. Finally click the Apply button in the printer configuration tool to start the printing service and you are ready to start firing printouts from your
Linux machine.

Sharing Printers over Samba

Samba emulates Windows file and print sharing in Linux. If you have a printer on your Linux machine and you want others to share it on a Windows network, then you need to configure Samba to act as a windows print server. But first, the printer has to be installed on the machine locally.

Now, open Webmin and click on “Servers”. This will open a form for you. Select “Samba Windows File Sharing” and click

on “Create a New Printer Share” link at the top of the table. This will bring up a form asking you for the share name; give any logical share name. Next, you need to select the connected printer that you like to share over the network from the option “Unix Printer”. Then give the spool directory name as /tmp in spool directory text box (you can select any other directory also, but /tmp is is preferred). Now click on the create button to make your printer sharable. Lastly restart Samba by going back to the Samba main page and clicking on the “Restart Samaba Servers” button at the bottom left of the page.

The printer is now shared over network as a windows print share. 

Accessing shared printer on Windows 

Another scenario could be that you have a shared printer running on the windows machine and you want to access that printer from your Linux desktop. 

Open Start Menu>Printing. This will open “Red Hat Printer Config” tool. Select New from its tool bar, which will run a wizard for you. Click on the forward button. Here you have to to give a “Print Queue Name”. Give any name to it and select “Windows Printer” and click forward button. Now, you will be asked to fill in the Share name, Host IP, User name, Password and Workgroup. Give the share name of your remote printer, IP address of the Windows machine where the remote printer is connected, username and password to the windows shared (if provided), and finally give the workgroup name of your shared network. Click on the forward button and then the Apply button to save the settings. To start the Printing, click on the Apply button from the Red Hat Printer config tool’s toolbar.

Scanning

Scanners have become fairly common, and to use a scanner in PCQLinux 8.0, you use a scanning tool called SANE.

Most scanners that you buy these days have USB support. PCQLinux 8.0 supports both parallel ports as well as USB scanners. To use your scanner, connect you scanner to the Linux machine and launch SANE from start menu/ Graphics>Scanning tool. The tool automatically detects your scanner and shows you the port where the scanner is connected.

Click OK to start the scanner application. In this application (see screenshot), you can set parameters like scan resolution, the scan mode, the file name for the scan, etc. After making these settings, you can start scanning by clicking on Scan button.

Once the scan is over, you can easily open it to view, or edit in GIMP or any other graphics software in either Linux or
Windows.

Sanjay Majumder