OpenPrinting
We have resources to help with printing under free operating systems like GNU/Linux and the BSDs or under commercial UNIX-like systems such as Solaris and Mac OS X. Looking for configuration or driver help? Try our CUPS Quick Start or look for your printer in the OpenPrinting Database. For more detail, try Till's Tutorial. If all else fails, ask a human in the forums. Researching a printer purchase? Simply browse our database. Looking for software? We host Foomatic, printer driver packages, and some other programs. Want to help? Here's how.
OpenPrinting is participating in Google Summer of Code 2013
The deadline for student applications for this year's Google Summer of Code has passed and we got good student applications for at least some of the project ideas we have offered. From now on until May 27 we will decide who of the candidates will work for us and assign mentors to them.
Thank you very much to everyone who has applied.
See past Openprinting GSoC News »
OpenPrinting Summit 2013 together with PWG Meeting at Apple in Cupertino on May 14-17
Our annual meeting, the OpenPrinting Summit is approaching! This time it is again held together with the PWG (Printing Working Group) Meeting at Apple in Cupertino. We invite again printer manufacturers, developers of Linux printing components as CUPS, Ghostscript, Color Management, desktops, applications, of Linux distributions, ... to plan and discuss on making printing under Linux "just work". This time the sessions are integrated with the sessions of the PWG, an OS-independent standardization organization for digital printing.
See the OpenPrinting Summit web page.
PDF as standard print job format is completely implemented on Debian and Ubuntu and will soon get upstream standard
From Ubuntu Oneiric (11.10, released mid-October) on all important desktop applications (GTK/GNOME, Qt/KDE, LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, ...) send print jobs in PDF and not in PostScript any more by default. In addition, a complete CUPS filter chain to process print jobs in PDF is available and used by Debian and Ubuntu.
CUPS author Mike Sweet/Apple have decided to not include the Linux-specific CUPS filters in the upstream CUPS source any more and we have agreed to maintain them at OpenPrinting. Here we will do some clean-up and discontinue the PostScript-centric workflow in favor of the PDF workflow, meaning that the upstream standard for CUPS under Linux (using CUPS plus our filter package) will be the PDF-based job processing, letting every non-PDF input be converted to PDF first, page management options being applied by a pdftopdf filter and Ghostscript being called with PDF as input.
Having this workflow we ask all driver developers kindly to not create any PPDs/drivers for non-Postscript printers which require exclusively PostScript. PPD files should at least accept PDF or CUPS Raster now. See also our driver design/packaging page.
More info on our page about the PDF printing workflow.
Making Printing "Just Work" - Volunteers and/or Sponsors needed!
For getting a great user experience with printing there is still a lot of coding needed. Your contribution, either work or funding, is highly appreciated. As we want our work to get a standard, we will let every completed project get into the major Linux distributions, so your work will help a lot of Linux users and will make Linux a better OS.
Enter the amazing world of free software and help fixing bug #1 of Linux.
Currently, we appreciate volunteers/sponsors for these projects:
Vendor WIN32/Mac OS X drivers made available to Linux applications:
Make many more printers working under Linux by creating a wrapper framework for the manufacturer's Windows/Mac OS X drivers, like the ndiswrapper for WLAN cards.
JTAPI implementation: The OpenPrinting workgroup has designed a Job Ticket API (JTAPI) already. You can help us by writing an implementation of this API (libjtapi). We especially also need an implementation of the Printer Working Group: Print Job Ticket (PWG:PJT).
Find more information and contact info on our project implementation page.
We appreciate your participation on these projects.
For Developers
The goal of the OpenPrinting workgroup is to develop and promote a set of standards that will address the complete printing needs of embedded, mobile, desktop, enterprise, and production environments, including management, reliability, security, scalability, printer feature access and network accessibility. This is achieved by
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creating a Common Printing Dialog for all applications and desktops
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providing the tools for publishing printer drivers in distribution-independent packages
OpenPrinting has merged with the former linuxprinting.org and provides now a one-stop location for printing with Posix-style operating systems. OpenPrinting organizes several meetings throughout the year to bring the important people on the area of printing together. Meetings recently held are:
- OpenPrinting Summit 2011 in San Francisco, April 2011
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OpenPrinting Meeting on the LF Summit in Austin (TX), April 2008
How to use Libre Office in Ubuntu to Create A Client Database | LibreOffice Tutorial
In this new LibreOffice Calc tutorial for Ubuntu users I will show you how to create a new client list and how to use the filter tool in order to narrow your search. Our LibreOffice tutorial series is suitable for you if you run a small business and in dealing with your everyday business related activities.
Top 5 MPlayer Skins For Your Ubuntu Desktop
We have recently started bringing out more eyecandy stuff as we really think that Linux has to shed its "old command only interface for geeks" image to make it appealing to more people and as you know there is strength in numbers. Yeah we know Ubuntu has changed that a lot!! but hey allow us to speed up the process. Here is our take on some of the most appealing themes to juice up your Mplayer experience.
Stellarium - A free planetarium software for star gazing in Ubuntu
Stellarium is an open-source planetarium program that has gained a considerable popularity together with other free and open-source astronomical programs such as Celestia and KStars. What makes Stellarium a standout among a plethora of other contenders is its balance of features and the simplicity it offers for a novice user while maintaining a high scientific accuracy.
How to create a Google Chrome Extension - For Beginners - Basics [Part 2]
Here is our second part on "How to create a Google Chrome extension". Last time we made a basic "hello world" chrome extension. This time we will be going to the innards of a real world Google Chrome extension to see how things will work in real time.
Top 10 GNOME Wallpapers
Wallpapers!! What would we do without them? Here is the ist of top rated Gnome wallpapers which captured the attention of the users of gnome-look.org. What would we do without them??
Adobe’s 64 bit Flash 11 for Linux too
Ever since the dawn of 64 Bit technology in computers people wanted everything to be 64 Bit. It was proven that a 64 Bit system would create fewer bottlenecks and deliver better performance than a 32 Bit variant. Adobe has realised this problem faced by browsers and began developing a plug-in for its Flash player. They have come out with the solution in the correct time and released the first Beta version of the Flash 11. The Beta version incorporates major upgrades in configurations and support for the widely acclaimed and feature rich media browser plug-in.
Top 5 VLC media player skins
There are few people on this globe who use a PC and have never heard about the VLC media player. So we are not gonna waste your time in getting into the details. As you all know, the default interface does not do justice to the player. Of course VLC is completely skinnable. Here is the list of 5 of the best VLC skins to be downloaded from gnome-look.org. All the skins have been rated by the users themselves.
Top Windows games that run flawlessly in Ubuntu using Wine
Even though most games wont run natively on Ubuntu there is still a sizeable number that runs flawlessly on it thanks to the almighty Wine. The Wine app database lists a few games that run flawlessly on Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution for that matter and assigns a rating for them based on precious metals.
Google Music Manager now Plays to Ubuntu’s tunes.
The tremendous potential for online music portability and sharing has resulted in several software giants coming out with musical applications for web based music storage and sharing. And the best part is that they do not charge you for using these services. The biggest of such services available today is of course Google Music or Music Beta as it is officially known is now available to Ubuntu users.
Top 15 Firefox themes for this summer
Summer is here and I would like to introduce you to our selection of 15 gorgeous Mozilla Firefox themes which you will certainly like a lot! These Firefox skins will bring in a new perspective on that boring gray layout. :)
IDE for Ubuntu
Linux, as with many other things, has no shortage when it comes to getting down to the more technical aspects in computing. Be it coding, testing or anything else that is related to the geeky arts, the free and open source community has a lot to offer. In this post we’ll be looking at some of the most popular and some not so popular Integrated Development Environments (IDE) out there which score a lot with regard to quality and flexibility.
Subdownloader: An easy way to download subtitles
Almost every single one of you who has a desktop computer or a laptop or even a Netbook might have seen at least one movie in their computer for sure. And many of you might have seen the movie with its subtitle. Everyone prefers to make use of the subtitles available with a movie file because it is often very difficult to follow fast paced dialogues and we will definitely have to rely on a lot on the subtitle to understand the movie completely.
Old King of Computers now on Ubuntu
If you have been using computers for a while now say around 40 years or more then you must have probably started you first lessons in computing on the Commodore 64 computer. Many modern day children and engineers won’t probably know what the Commodore 64 is. It is nothing but the old Keyboard computer which you might have now seen in old movies or preferably in museums or old government offices.
UM Player – An Open Source Media Wonder!
The power of collaborative development is doing wonders in the world of computing. Open source software is no longer just a cheaper alternative to those premium software tools, but now they are technically superior and user centric too. There are open source alternatives now for all types of software’s in cloud computing, OS, editing tools, office suites and the list just goes on. Today we take a closer look into UM Player (Universal Media player), an Open Source media player which is in fact gaining huge user base in Ubuntu community too.
First glimpse of Ubuntu Software Centre 5.0!
One thing in Ubuntu, which has always hit rock bottom in terms of popularity, is Ubuntu Software Centre. The reason often cited is its weak design and layout. Lot of attempts were made, but none of them brought a wind of change in perception among the user community. The guys at Canonical have been under fire recently to resolve this problem. One more attempt is round the corner, Ubuntu Software Centre 5.0 is expected to launch soon.
Mozilla delivers Firefox 5 | Moves to more frequent release cycles
Three months ago, when we saw the Firefox 4 release, there was a hell lot of buzz surrounding it, and the news trended in Twitter for hours as people felt that, it had been quite a while since they got a new Firefox, unlike the case with Chrome(the direct competitor). Some may admit that, a huge release with a lot of new features is better than frequent releases with not so important features!
Past Google Summer of Code Projects
The Linux Foundation is accepted for the Google Summer of Code 2012: Many student projects at OpenPrinting!
At OpenPrinting we are proud to announce that the Linux Foundation is accepted and so we can offer our student projects:
Canon Pixma Ip6210d
Hello, I'm finding for Canon Pixma ip6210d drivers printer. They aren't into Canon website. Please I need they to work with Linux.
Thanks for all.
No drivers for Canon Pixma ip6210d, not free, of course. Turboprint has this drivers, but is not free (pay). I have the same printer :(
OpenPrinting Summit San Francisco 2011
5 Years of OpenPrinting Summits!
We started in April 2006 in Atlanta ...
Actionable next steps toward the goal of making printing on Linux "just work".
The printing activities of the Linux Foundation revolve around a few focal points:
