Users are invited to test drive various planned methods

Dec 27, 2016 21:40 GMT  ·  By

Canonical's Till Kamppeter sent a message to the Ubuntu development mailing list to invite early adopters of the upcoming Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus) operating system to test a brand-new printing system implemented recently in the GNU/Linux distribution.

It would appear that Ubuntu 17.04 received support for IPP Everywhere printers, which means that you'll finally be able to print to network printers without special software or drivers, as well as Apple AirPrint support, so you can create full-quality printed output without the need to download or install drivers on your Ubuntu Linux operating system and without having access to a Windows or Mac computer.

"Have the printer connected to your network. It works with wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi. For Wi-Fi have it correctly set up for Wi-Fi access, either connecting to your router's Wi-Fi or using its built-in print-only Wi-Fi server," said Till Kamppeter. "At least one of these methods should be possible to set up without a Windows or Mac computer, so that users only having a mobile device can print."

Driverless printing is coming to Ubuntu 17.04

That's right, driverless printing is coming to Ubuntu 17.04 (Zesty Zapus), which is currently under heavy development and should get its first Alpha development release this Thursday, December 29, 2016, but only for opt-in flavors. This right here is terrific news for those who always wanted to use that network printer for which Linux drivers were not and still aren't available.

Before attempting to test drive the driverless printing support, make sure that your Ubuntu 17.04 installation is up to date first. Then, please use either fully automatic setup or configure the network printer via http://localhost:631/ or any other printer setup tools as explained by Till Kamppeter in the respective mailing list announcement. Have fun!