I couldn't print something just a second ago after trying with: $ lp [filename] from my temrinal-fu. Of course, it's because I never set the printer up after I reinstalled an Xfce4 Lenny destop yesterday. No worries. Our printer is an HP OfficeJet 6310 and it's got an ethernet port so I plugged it into the router and gave it a static IP. Here is how I "install" it on my laptop (a wireless client on the LAN) in seconds.

You don't have to do this in your terminal, that's just how I roll. Everything in terminal-fu. I groove with roxterm.

Since I have an HP printer, I installed hplip to handle it when I installed my desktop. If you haven't, go ahead and do that else the following commands will be pretty useless. OK, in terminal-fu...

As me, a regular user, I ran: $ hp-probe

I chose number 1 as it's a networked 6310, and it was subsequently found in about 4 seconds. Right on. The next command has to be run as root, so:

$ su, [enter]

# hp-setup

Same box in the terminal, I choose number 1 again and there ya go. Found. I hit enter a couple times to set it up. I hit q when prompted to set the fax up because I didn't want to. Q quits the utility.

OK -- Printer set up, but now I need to tell CUPS about it. alt+tab to Opera, since it's always open, and point to: http://127.0.0.1:631

I choose the Admin tab and when there I choose to find new printers. 'Course, there it is and I click the add printer button. Yeah, sure - those are the drivers, enter and done.

What? Maybe 35 seconds? I dunno but it was fast. I know I'm finished because I ctrl+d'd out of root and ran the same print command I ran earlier. Only this time there was the printer and I heard it fire-up and produce.

Rockin'

Of course, you'd fire-up your browser if you just plugged into your buddy's LAN, too. If (s)he's got a networked, or shared printer CUPS will find it for you when you tell it to from your browser. The same thing I did from above. Of course, if your friend isn't sharing a printer you're SOL. Try to get your friend to be less selfish or maybe you need better friends. ;) Or, and this is the best -- maybe your friend is a candidate for a Debian file/print/web server. Maybe? Wicked easy and it's an article for a different day.