Different printing setting in Gnome Shell and in Unity

Question

Why are the printing setting different in Gnome Shell and Unity for Ubuntu 11.10?

I believe this may even be a bug - more than a question. But I want to refine my questions before posting them at Launchpad.

Under Ubuntu 11.10, Unity had a printing menu that looks like this:

Yet in the Shell, it looks rather like this:

I've connected my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1525, to my University's wireless printing system (LPD). It was very simple under Ubuntu 10.04, and also after upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10. it was quite easy well.

The problem is - under Unity it worked out-of-the-box (just as it was in 10.04), yet under Gnome Shell it didn't.

Furthermore, printing under Shell doesn't send it to print, yet under Unity it prints just fine..

I like both DE - but prefer Shell as of today. Why is the printing issue different..?

Solution 1

You're actually looking at two separate applications. The screenshot at the top is system-config-printer (called "Printing" in the shell) and the screenshot at the bottom is gnome-printers-panel (called "Printers" -- but they may have the same name in your language!). Both are available in both desktop environments.

The latter one is probably supposed to replace the former in Gnome 3, but as you have noticed, it isn't as functional as the old one (yet). That explains why both are installed.

I can't explain why printing doesn't work in Gnome Shell. Do you still experience problems if you use system-config-printer to set up your printer in Gnome Shell?

Solution 2

A nice way to get around this is to make the old printer settings launcher visible in Gnome Shell is to edit the launcher directly:

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/system-config-printer.desktop

and change the line NotShowIn=KDE;Gnome; to NotShowIn=KDE;.

Also, as Timo mentioned above, the name of the new and the old printer settings launchers may be the same, so you may also want to change the line Name=Printers to something like Name=Advanced Printer Settings.

Comments

[ushabtay]

I can open via terminal the 'system-config-printer' - but it doesn't help, since when i want to print - it goes to the default app, which is 'gnome-printers'

[Timo Kluck]

@ushabtay: I don't see what you mean. When you print something, it shouldn't go to either application. It should just go to the printer. You should see the same print queue from both applications, I think. What are you printing?

[ushabtay]

regular PDF files that are mainly boring academic articles .. as i said - perfectly runs under Unity, and doesn't work under the shell

[lifeofguenter]

4 years later and the situation has unfortunately not improved yet :)