Printer configuration used to cause a great many headaches for administrators and users alike. These headaches are now mostly a thing of the past, thanks to cups, the free print server using the IPP protocol (Internet Printing Protocol).

This program is divided over several Debian packages: cups is the central print server; cups-bsd is a compatibility layer allowing use of commands from the traditional BSD printing system (lpd daemon, lpr and lpq commands, etc.); cups-client contains a group of programs to interact with the server (block or unblock a printer, view or delete print jobs in progress, etc.); and finally, printer-driver-gutenprint contains a collection of additional printer drivers for cups.

After installation of these different packages, cups is administered easily through a web interface accessible at the local address: http://localhost:631/. There you can add printers (including network printers), remove, and administer them. You can also administer cups with the graphical interface provided by the desktop environment. Finally, there is also the system-config-printer graphical interface (from the Debian package of the same name).