Ubuntu PDF Printing Is Slow

Have you ever had problems printing a PDF to your printer? We have experienced this on a few HP laser printers already. Strange enough, it has not been a problem on other HP printers.

If you have experienced problems with slow or no printing at all, its an easy fix. Here are the two most common problems...

#1 - You need to switch your drivers from a Postscript/Foomatic driver to a CUPS/Gutenprint driver. You can also try a PCL driver if its not installed automatically.


#2 - You can also go into your printer settings and select a lower DPI, possibly to a draft mode.

#1 - To change your drivers to CUPS or PCL, go to "System > Administration > Printing" and then right click your printer giving you problems. Click the "change" button to the right of Make and Model. It will then ask to change drivers. Now pick your printer brand (should already be selected) click forward, and then the model should be selected already also. To the right of the models list are the drivers. Here is where you want to select something different than the Postscript driver. That should do it!

#2 - to change the quality, again go to "System > Admin > Printing" and right click the printer you want to change the settings on. Click Properties. Click Printer Options in the list on the left and then look for Print Quality. My laser printer is set to normal, but you can also change this to "draft -economy" mode or "best" mode.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous10:22 AM

    helpful; thanks. HP 4050 PS ("recommended") driver was interminably slow (many cpu cycles running pdftops filter for each page).

    Changing to CUPS+Gutenberg driver fixed the slow pdf printing issue here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous11:28 AM

    Thanks for the solution (HP LaserJet2200). It kills my pain of endless waiting for the printer to finish. Especially for those PDFs with photos.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous2:13 AM

    What do you do if the printer model is not in the list? thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  4. If the printer model is not on the list it might mean that your printer is not supported or that you will have to find drivers for it and install them manually. Most printers should be in the list, although some brands like Lexmark, Brother and Canon do not play well with linux systems (they wont release their source code). Check here to find more info about your printer: http://www.openprinting.org/printers

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  5. Try the generic PCL drivers.

    ReplyDelete