Basic Printing

[Snorkasaurus]

Greetings Earthlings,

I don't print very often... which might explain why I am still using an HP LaserJet 4 Plus. What is the easiest way to have basic printing support for this device inside my Wheezy/OpenBox VM? Installing CUPS seems to be just short of 90MB with dependencies, which seems ridiculous to me. I would like to think that setting up a twenty year old printer could be done inside of 10MB since I need nothing other than the ability to push data to it. Actually, I'd like to think it could be done inside of 4MB but I am trying to be generous. In addition to this, the interface of basic CUPS at http://127.0.0.1:631/ looks like it was developed by a hippie in 1983... I am okay with that, but I can't imagine that a hippie in 1983 would make anything that is 90MB in size. :-)

Is this really the best way to setup basic printing support for a single ancient printer that does not need to be shared or managed beyond purging jobs when it barfs?

S.

[viking60]

Well you are in "luck" since laserjet supports Postscript. You can use LPR .
As you can see here it supports direct printing of Ascii text:

http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-LaserJet_4

I don't know how much space it takes but it should be lighter than Cups - but I bet it will not be easier though (It can be used without Cups). I use Cups even if those hippies did have a tendency to smoke their socks

Basically you can print like this:

Code: Select all

sudo cat my-file-to-print.txt > /dev/lp

Here you see some guys who managed well despite of all their smoking:

[Snorkasaurus]

Well you are in "luck" since laserjet supports Postscript. You can use LPR .

Hmmm, the instructions at this link say to install cups.

As you can see here it supports direct printing of Ascii text:

http://www.openprinting.org/printer/HP/HP-LaserJet_4

Hmmm, this eventually gets me to here, which still gives me the impression I need cups.

I don't know how much space it takes but it should be lighter than Cups - but I bet it will not be easier though (It can be used without Cups). I use Cups even if those hippies did have a tendency to smoke their socks

Basically you can print like this:

Code: Select all

sudo cat my-file-to-print.txt > /dev/lp

Is it possible to print more than just ascii text via lpr? I seem to be having trouble finding instructions for setting up printing on Wheezy that do not use cups.

S.

[viking60]

I think you do not need Cups with LPR even if it says so in the instructions. I also think that you can print other formats, but I have not tried it.
I forgot to mention that you might have to install HPLIP it should be in your repos. I think that would only add to your problem though since it seems to require Cups..

[Snorkasaurus]

Damn, it sounds like I am installing 90MB of drivers to use a printer with 2MB of memory.
S.

[viking60]

Yup

[Snorkasaurus]

I can't possibly imagine that with "tens of thousands of developer eyes" looking at and working on Linux, nobody saw this and called shenanigans.
S.