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Accepted
Jonny
Asked: 2018-05-16 00:51:42 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 18.04: Printer not working for most apps (PDF, evince, Firefox...)

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I have a problem with all GTK apps (evince, gedit, Firefox, gimp) not seeing my installed printer. When pressing Print, I can only choose Print to file, my printer is not shown. So I can not print PDF documents, websites...

In LibreOffice, the printer works.

How can I get the printer to be seen by the apps and print PDFs?

Some more information: It is a network printer (hp). When a document is printed from LibreOffice, the printer is shown for a few seconds as printer in the other GTK apps. Then disappears again.

firefox printing pdf 18.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I got it solved as follows:

    1. Reinstall hplip

      sudo apt-get purge hplip
sudo apt-get install hplip

      and

    2. add a second network printer. (Note that I had manually installed the newest hplip version in order to get the printer running which did not help and resulted in an error message after bootup, if you did not do this, maybe just step 2 is enough.)

      Even though there is a printer already shown in "Settings / Devices / Printers", I had to add a second printer as follows:

      1. Go to Settings → Devices → Printers.
      2. Additional Printer Settings
      3. Add Network Printer
      4. Choose the shown IP address or own printer name and follow the dialogues.

    It now works for me. In the Settings → Devices → Printers tab there are now 2 printers shown.

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  2. Suddenly the installed Document Viewer in Ubuntu 18.04 no longer sees any installed printer, Brother or HP. After purging and reinstalling cups to no effect, I installed Okular from Ubuntu Software. It saw the printers and worked perfectly on the first try.

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