Can't duplex print in 12.04

[David Fletcher]

On Thu, 2013-01-10 at 07:08 -0600, Linda wrote:
> company as Savin) also works flawlessly. You do have to 
> install the printer on every computer but that is true for 
> Windows and Linux.
>                       Linda
> 

I think I disagree with that last bit, so long as the printer has been
added to CUPS.

For the last several years I've had an Epson Stylus Photo 950 hooked up
to the USB port of my server. CUPS knows for itself exactly how to drive
this printer, so logging into port 631 of the server, adding the printer
and telling CUPS the exact model it is then ticking the "Share this
printer" box is sufficient for the entire network. You don't need to do
anything to any other computer other than, perhaps, tell CUPS on the
desktops to use shared network printers. The new printer is then
automagically available to e.g. Libre Office.

As I Understand It that's all you have to do for document printing. Your
desktop apparently produces Postscript and fires it off at the queue on
the print server, which then sorts out how to drive the actual printer.
For printing graphics such as photographs I've found that the best thing
to do is use Gimp-Gutenprint. Now we're back to the original problem
though - Gutenprint needs to know how to drive the printer and again
AIUI the desktop machine now does the preparation of the printout for
the printer. The server knows that this is what was passed to it rather
than Postscript and just fires it down the USB cable or whatever to the
printer because the work has already been done by Gimp-Gutenprint.

If you connect the printer to an Ethernet port and just let everybody
fire jobs at it at random rather than go through the queue system on a
server then yes, unless it's built into CUPS you will need to add the
driver software to every computer.

The second approach is the one I have adopted at this time.

Now, I could just copy the .deb files from Brother onto the server and
install them but I suspect they pull in a load of other stuff so
sometime I'll have to try to do some testing on another trial machine.
Or maybe a virtual machine. The server is built to be a lean and mean,
low power machine and that's the way I want to keep it.

Now, I very much hope I've not been talking BS but experience from both
home and work indicates to me that this is basically how CUPS works.

I spent most of Monday trying to get the new Brother printer to work the
same way as the Epson always has, by attempting to track down files
starting with the ppd file and copy them into the system but failed. My
head felt like I'd been banging it against a brick wall. So, I think I
might build an Ubuntu Virtual Server which I've not done before and see
what happens to it if I put the .deb files onto that.

Dave