The nightmarish problem of installing a printer

[Dick Hoogendijk]

  On 22-9-2010 21:35, Matthew Seaman wrote:
> On 22/09/2010 20:04:25, Dick Hoogendijk wrote:
>> You're certainly not the only one liking CUPS. I long hesitated to use
>> it, but once I'd decided to do so, I wouldn't go back to lpr. No way.
>> It's very easy to set up and does a great job. CUPS is OK but most
>> FreeBSD people don't seem to think so. I don't get it.
> CUPS is really nice *when it works*.  If you're lucky and have managed
> to buy the right sort of printer hardware, and the Gods are smiling upon
> you, then CUPS will serve you well.
The list of supported hardware is very very long, so this part shouldn't 
be so hard.
> On the other hand, when CUPS is bad, it is truly awful.  Excessively
> hard to debug; impossible to fix without Guru-level powers.  One of
> those "No user serviceable parts inside" sort of things.
This might be true. I guess this is a valid reason not to use it if you 
want to be able to debug things yourself _AND_  if you are a code guru.
> CUPS works brilliantly when I plug my printer's USB cable directly into
> my Mac.  But I've never yet managed to print to exactly the same printer
> via CUPS when it is plugged into my FreeBSD server.
Hmm, strange. CUPS works very well when I use a linux server, but it 
also works very well on my main server, now running OpenSolaris-b134. I 
would not want to be offensive, but could it be something inside the 
FreeBSD code that makes it harder to function w/ CUPS? It really is a 
pity, because it really is very easy to set printers up _AND_ share them 
over you LAN at the same time.