How to add a printer in gnome-shell

Question

I'm using Gnome Shell (although I'm not sure whether the "Printers" app is part of that or just part of Gnome).

I go to "Printers" from the overview, click the + button on the bottom left, choose network and then see a message "FirewallD is not running. Network printer detection needs services mdns, ipp, ipp-client and samba-client enabled on firewall.".

It's not auto detected anything. There's an Address box and a Search by Address tickbox, but neither seem to do anything. I'm frustrated because I know all the details of the printer, but have nowhere to put them in. Automation is supposed to make things easier, no?

For example I know the printer is at lpd://10.67.5.3/lp1 but I can't put this in anywhere.

Is there a GUI that works, or have I misunderstood how to use it?

Solution 1

The Gnome Printer interface still has quite a few bugs (like the one you mentioned). To use the Printer interface that comes with Ubuntu, press Alt F2, and type in system-config-printer.

Solution 2

Ditch gnome's GUI and revert to the good ol' CUPS interface at http://localhost:631

Click Add Printer and follow the instructions on screen.

Comments

[Admin]

Wow the port 631 localhost works in Debian Linux as well! After dealing with the native printer interface (still mystified trying to adjust double sided printing or to see the IP address in plain English) the step-by-step interface of the CUPS internal web site is just what I needed. I now have a launcher on my desktop for "Printers."

[artfulrobot]

The native CUPS interface will work with any system that uses CUPS and hasn't disabled it. So that's Debian, Mint, millions of other linux flavours, and Mac OSX etc.

[Robin Winslow]

wow never knew about that. this is totes the purest way to manage printers.

[Oki Erie Rinaldi]

It's 2017 now. Gnome Printer is still buggy as hell.

[reas0n]

This works in CentOS 7 also. And yes, Gnome Printer is terrible

[Jan M.]

This does not work, as @OkiErieRinaldi said. It still gets stuck at "installing openprinting-gutenprint" and thus is utterly useless.

[joelittlejohn]

I had to sudo apt install system-config-printer on Ubuntu Gnome 17.04

[Jan M.]

Hi it's 2019 and it is still a piece of crap.