December 10, 2003
Panther Printing
You know, for all they say about how easy OS X makes everything, there's just some things it doesn't. I have this old LaserJet 6L attached to a linux box. I don't want to buy a new printer, it suits me well. At some point I will just get an apple base station and a USB printer, but this works great.In Jaguar, it took me forever to figure out how to print to it. I ended up having to download gimp-print cups printer drivers, and then configure an IP printer using LPR/LPD. I set it up to go to my default printer ("lp") and it just wouldn't work. It took me a while to figure out that I actually had to type the "lp" in there. It was a Jaguar bug.
Now in Panther, it just flat out doesn't work.
Luckily my linux server also has a samba installation so I can fake it out by calling it a windows printer and printing through Samba. But there are probably a bunch of unix-only LPR/LPD printers out there that can't receive Panther documents anymore. Stupid.