You can experiment to see which printer selection works best for your printer if its model is not listed. You might not be able to use all the features of your printer, but you will be able to set up printing service. Click Forward when you have made your choice.
The final screen allows you to name your printer and also provide more detailed information to help you identify and manage it (useful if you have a few dozen printers dotted around an office). This screen is shown in Figure 8.4.
FIGURE 8.4 Help yourself by providing information that could be useful if you need to track down the printer for any reason.
The final screen (shown in Figure 8.5) summarizes what system-config-printer is about to do. If you are happy with the details, click the Apply button to commit your changes to the system.
FIGURE 8.5 Double-check the details shown before you commit to creating a new printer entry in /etc/printcap; when you are happy, click Apply to create the new print queue.
When the print queue has been created, you are asked whether you would like to print a test page. Click Yes to save your new printer setup and to print a test page. If you click No, a test page is not printed, and you have to delete the new printer entry or save or cancel your changes before you quit system-config-printer.
You can see the new printer defined in the system-config-printer main window as shown in Figure 8.6.
FIGURE 8.6 New printer entries created in /etc/printcap displayed in system-config-printer's main window.
You can also configure multiple print queues for the same printer. Use this technique to test printing using different print drivers with the same printer. Create a new queue, give it a specific name (such as testpcl3), and select a different printer. Finish the configuration and print a test page to compare the results against other entries to find the best output. You can also use this technique to define a monochrome or color printer entry for the same printer or to use different drivers for different types of media (such as regular or photo paper).
Editing Printer Settings
You also use the system-config-printer tool to edit the newly defined printers. To edit the printer settings, highlight the printer's listing in the printer browser window. You can then select specific settings related to that printer by using the tabs that appear in the right side of the dialog box. The Printer Options dialog, part of the printer settings, is shown in Figure 8.7.
FIGURE 8.7 Edit a printer's settings by using tabs in system-config-printer.
The first tab in this dialog enables you to assign a new description for the printer. In this example, the printer has the description OfficeJet Pro K5400. Other tabs in this dialog enable you to change the queue type or queue options (such as whether to print a banner page or set the image area of a page), to select or update the driver, or to set print job options (shown in Figure 8.8).
FIGURE 8.8 Configure how system-config-printer handles print jobs that are submitted to it using the Job Options tab.
When you make changes, make sure to click the Apply button in the bottom right-hand corner of system-config-printer in order to restart CUPS and for the changes to take effect. Click Quit from the Action menu when you're finished.
The following commands help you manage printing services:
► accept — Controls print job access to the CUPS server via the command line
► cancel — Cancels a print job from the command line
► cancel — Command-line control of print queues
► disable — Controls printing from the command line
► enable — Command-line control CUPS printers
► lp — Command-line control of printers and print service
► lpc — Displays status of printers and print service at the console
► lpq — Views print queues (pending print jobs) at the console
► lprm — Removes print jobs from the print queue via the command line
► lpstat — Displays printer and server status
► system-config-printer — Fedora's graphical printer configuration tool
Reference
► http://www.linuxprinting.org/ — Browse here for specific drivers and information about USB and other types of printers.
► http://www.hp.com/wwsolutions/linux/products/printing_imaging/index.html — Short but definitive information from HP regarding printing product support under Linux.
► http://www.cups.org/ — A comprehensive repository of CUPS software, including versions for Fedora.
► http://www.pwg.org/ipp/ — Home page for the Internet Printing Protocol standards.
► http://www.linuxprinting.org/cups-doc.html — Information about the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS).
► http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/ — Home page for the Ghostscript interpreter.
CHAPTER 9
Games
For any operating system to have mass-market appeal, it has to have a number of games that are compatible with it. Let's face it, no one wants to use computers just for word processing or databases — they want to be able to use them as a source of relaxation and even fun! This chapter looks at the state of Linux gaming and tells you how to get some of the current blockbusters up and running in a Linux environment. We even show you how to run Windows-based games under Linux.
Linux Gaming
A number of games come as part of the Fedora distribution, and they are divided into three distinct camps: KDE games, GNOME games, and X games. Our favorites are Planet Penguin Racer and Frozen Bubble (see Figure 9.1), but there are a few others for you to choose from. The best part, of course, is trying each one and seeing what you think. Many other free games are available across the web, so go to Google and see what you come up with.
FIGURE 9.1 Be very careful; Frozen Bubble can become extremely addictive!
However, games for Linux do not stop there — a few versions of popular Windows-based games are being ported across to the Linux platform, including Doom 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, and Quake 4. These three popular games have native Linux support and in some cases can run at similar, if not better, speeds than their Windows counter parts.
Finally, an implementation of the Wine code, called Cedega, is optimized especially for games. This uses application interfaces to make Windows games believe they are running on a Windows platform and not a Linux platform. Bear in mind that Wine stands for "Wine is not an emulator," so do not start thinking of it as such — the community can get quite touchy about it!
A historical gripe of Linux users has been the difficulty involved in getting modern 3D graphics cards working under Linux. Thankfully, since ATI (one of the major graphics card vendors) was bought up by AMD, they have released a true open source driver that is available to install under Fedora. NVIDIA also supports Linux, albeit by using closed source drivers. This means that Fedora does not ship with native 3D drivers for NVIDIA cards. It is fairly easy to get hold of the driver and install it; the Livna.org site has RPMs that are ready and waiting to be installed using yum.