Version: (using KDE KDE 3.5.4) Installed from: Debian testing/unstable Packages Today, I tried to add a printer in KDE. Ouch. Turns out I had to install CUPS and then pick CUPS from some drop menu. Sorry, but this is just not obvious and I found it really quite hard to get going. In the end, I abandoned using KDEs interfaces at all and used CUPS, which I have to say, was a whole lot easier, despite being browser based.
I don't mean to piss on anyone's bonfire here, but if there could be some kind of really easy KDE printer UI, or at least something saying 'you've not got CUPS' that'd be great.
Created attachment 17737 [details] Screenshot
Bug reports that say "this sucks" aren't very useful. Retitling to reflect the constructive suggestion in the report
Agreed. Apologies. I was tearing my hair out on this one.
Matt, you're running Debian testing/unstable and installed CUPS freshly (after KDE): so are you sure this isn't a Debian package maintainer glitch (they have something like "dpkg-configure" for package post-install scripts, right?)? Usually, this isn't a problem at all: when kprinter is started for the first time ever, it scans for CUPS and uses it if it finds it. It also remembers a selection a user has made. So if you started kprinter without CUPS having been installed, it defaulted to a "Generic LPR" or similar. It means that this will stay this way if you install CUPS afterwards, unless the Debian package maintainer's postinstall script says "Rrrrright -- the user installed CUPS, I think he also wants to *use* CUPS now, even though before my presence he preferred LPRng. I'll just override his previous choice.". Good luck convincing the Debian packager... :-)
I was unable to retrieve the screenshot the last time I commented. Now I could. The shot shows the string Server: /var/run/cups/cups.sock:631 This was indeed a KDEPrint deficiency that manifested itself when CUPS was upgraded to 1.2.0. According to bug 115891 (comment number 45: http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115891#c45 ), this is fixed now.
Closing old Resolved status bug.