Re: [gentoo-desktop] What "just works" and what doesn't?

[Rasmus Wiman]

Lindsay Haisley <fmouse-gentoo@×××.com> wrote:

> Printers are an Issue in Linux, and it's not just Gentoo.  Eric
> Raymond sent
> a flame letter to the CUPS people a while back detailing his horror
> story of
> setting up a CUPS printer.  His story was chillingly similar to my own
> experience.  It was a nightmare!  Maybe the Gentoo devs could pick up
> the
> ball and make CUPS a little easier to use.

For what it's worth, I think that some band-aid could lessen the problem
ESR ran into a bit.

The problem is that everyone assumes that they have to do some
configuration work on the client, especially if the thing refuses to
print.

Warn them! The default install is actually perfectly able to find any
correctly set up CUPS print server. If it doesn't print, it's the server
that's incorrectly set up. I've tried several distros and they have all
found my server without me touching any config. I recently installed
Macos X on my Mac, and the first time I hit Command-P, the Oki 4w on my
cups server came up as the default printer and it printed without a
hitch.

Warn them! Add some text to the ebuild postinst bit that says that one
should generally not have to touch the config to set Cups up as a
client. Do the same in the admin web interface so they don't start
tinkering with setting up queues on their clients and so on. Tell them
that problems tend to be caused by incorrectly set up servers. And do it
in less geeky words than mine.

This, of course, does not solve the other problem: That setting up the
server is a nightmare, and that the docs on how to do it also is.

I'm treating cancer with aspirin, but hopefully it's a good start.

/Rasmus Wiman

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