====== The New Generation of Printing: CUPS and Foomatic ======

**A Tutorial from Till Kamppeter and Kurt Pfeifle**

Given on September 4, 2002 on the [[http://www.linux-kongress.org/2002/|Linux-Kongress 2002]] in Cologne in Germany ([[http://www.linux-kongress.org/2002/tutorials/index.html#printing|Original announcement]])

We had also a [[http://www.linux-kongress.org/2002/supporters/printing/index.html|booth]] about printing with free software on the Linux-Kongress.

Here you find the hand-out papers for this Tutorial, more than 100 printed pages of knowledge about using the modern printing infrastructure of Unix and alike operating systems, especially [[http://www.cups.org/|CUPS]], [[:openprinting:database:foomatic|Foomatic]], and [[http://printing.kde.org/|KDE Print]]. All what we have shown and more is presented here in an easy-to-understand way with many examples. The papers can be browsed online, downloaded as PDF files and as HTML source tarballs.

[[http://www.openprinting.org//kpfeifle/LinuxKongress2002/Tutorial/|Go to the hand-out papers.]]

We thank [[http://www.hp.com/de/|HP Germany]] for providing us an [[http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-OfficeJet_D155|HP OfficeJet D155]] and an [[http://www.openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-PhotoSmart_P100|HP PhotoSmart P100]] for this event.\\ 
We thank also [[http://www.danka.de/|Danka Germany]] (now [[http://www.ricoh.com|Ricoh]]) for equipping us with PCs, flat screens, and network connectivity materials.

===== Discussion =====


You can discuss the tutorial in [[http://forums.linux-foundation.org/list.php?19|our forums]].

===== Comments =====


"//Six hours on *nix printing? Pah! I'd wasted at least ten times that persuading Red Hat to talk to my cheapo HP 710C, and worse, I still didn't understand how *nix systems actually set out to put things on paper. A marathon CUPS/Foomatic tutorial was just what I wanted.//

The speakers, both up to their necks in actual CUPS and Foomatic development, were bursting with enthusiasm for this wholesale makeover of the original lpr-based system. After being taken on board by Mandrake (now Mandriva) in 2000, CUPS has been adopted by several other Linux distros, not to mention Mac OS/X, and we were beginning to see why. Till and Kurt ran a formidable array of powerful GUI, browser and command-line CUPS tools. They all worked. It looked as if desktop *nix printers were going to start doing as they were told."

Beginning of a review from Ralph de Rijke

"//I just want to thank you, Kurt and Till, for the great Cups Tutorial yesterday at the International Linux Kongress at Cologne.//

It was very amazing. You showed things that i never heard before. There was a lot to laugh and a lot of info for us all.

I was very pleased to meet you and hear how you came to cups and found each other. I will have a lot of questions in the near future, but have a lot of fun the next two days in Cologne.

Thanks a lot for this day.

Andre Klocke from Cologne"

Posted by Andre Klocke on [[http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php|cups at easysw dot com]] (Sep. 5, 2002)