Printing in Linux

Linux provides a mature and flexible printing system using CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) and Ghostscript for interpreting PostScript. With these tools, users can format documents, dispatch them to printers, and manage job queues—all directly from the command line.

A Brief History of Printing

Shared Printing in the Early Days

In pre-PC environments, printers were shared over terminals. Banner pages and job tagging helped identify user prints. Output delivery was manual.

Character-Based Printers

Impact printers used fixed-width fonts. Control characters like backspace (`^H`) and underscore enabled effects such as bold and underline:

zcat /usr/share/man/man1/ls.1.gz | nroff -man | cat -A | head

Modern Printers and RIP

Laser printers support graphical output via page description languages like PostScript. Raster image processing (RIP) is now offloaded to the host system using Ghostscript, making printers cheaper and more portable.

Linux Printing Framework

CUPS handles printer drivers, spooling, and queue management. Ghostscript interprets PostScript for graphical printers. Together, they support a wide range of media types and output styles.

Preparing Files for Print

pr – Paginate Text for Monospaced Printers

Formats plain text with headers, margins, and spacing.

pr -3 -w 65 distros.txt

Option	Description
-l	Page length
-w	Page width
-h	Custom header title
-n	Line numbering

Sending Jobs to Printers

lpr – Berkeley Style Printing

lpr -P myprinter file.txt

-# for copies
-P for target printer
-r removes source file after printing

lp – System V Style Printing

lp -d myprinter -o page-left=36 -o cpi=12 file.txt

Option	Usage
-o cpi	Characters per inch
-o lpi	Lines per inch
-o page-left	Left margin
-o landscape	Orientation

a2ps – Convert to PostScript

Formats files into two-up layouts with headers and footers for PostScript printers.

a2ps file.txt -o output.ps -L 66

Monitoring and Managing Print Jobs

lpstat – Printer and Queue Status

lpstat -s
lpstat -a

lpq – View Queue Contents

lpq

Lists active jobs and their status, owner, size, and rank.

cancel / lprm – Cancel Print Jobs

cancel 603

Removes job #603. Use lprm or cancel depending on system style.

Conclusion

Linux offers full-featured printing utilities rooted in Unix traditions. From formatting pages with pr and dispatching with lp, to managing queues via lpq and lpstat, command-line users enjoy precise, scriptable control over print workflows—ideal for automation and system-level integration.