Printing in Manjaro and the majority of other Linux distributions is handled through the CUPS system. After installing Manjaro Linux, setting up a printer is one of the first tasks that many users will need to tackle.
In this guide, we will guide you through the process of setting up a printer on Manjaro Linux. CUPS makes the process a lot more painless than many other alternative methods, so that’s what we’ll be using.
In this tutorial you will learn:
- How to install and enable printer software (CUPS)
- How to configure printer automatically with HP Device Manager or CUPS
- How to manually setup a printer
- How to access print jobs, printers, and CUPS documentation
Category | Requirements, Conventions or Software Version Used |
---|---|
System | Manjaro Linux |
Software | N/A |
Other | Privileged access to your Linux system as root or via the sudo command. |
Conventions |
# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user |
Install and Enable Printer Software
Manjaro makes it pretty easy on us by providing a package that we can install and use to easily enable printing on our system. You can install it by opening a terminal and issuing the following command:
$ pamac install manjaro-printer
For good measure, you should add your user to the sys
group. Do that by executing this command (replace username
with the name of your current user account):
$ sudo gpasswd -a username sys
The next command will start the CUPS service and enable it to start up automatically anytime that your system is rebooted:
$ sudo systemctl enable --now org.cups.cupsd.service
Now we can move on to configuring a printer.
Printer Configuration
If you’re using a printer made by HP, the manufacturer provides a special software package that you can use to manage your printer. It’s called “HP Device Manager” and should already be installed. You can open it by searching inside the application launcher:
It belongs to the hplip
package, so if you don’t see it already on your system for some reason, try installing it with the following command in a terminal:
$ pamac install hplip
If you’re using a different brand, we can setup the printer through CUPS (this should also work for HP printers, but the previous method may be easier for you).
Since we’ve already enabled CUPS earlier, you can now plug your printer into the PC and it should be automatically detected and configured by CUPS. If you can’t get that to work, there’s no need to fret because it’s pretty easy to perform manual configuration through CUPS, as covered below.
Manual Printer Setup
If automatic detection has failed for you, install the following package in terminal to be able to configure the printer manually:
$ sudo pacman -S system-config-printer
With that installed, you’ll be able to access “Print Settings” from the application launcher:
This is basically a setup wizard, so all of the menus should be self explanatory. You can get started by clicking “unlock” and supplying your root password, then click “add” to configure your printer.
If your printer doesn’t show up, make sure that it’s powered on and connected properly.
Accessing CUPS
CUPS is accessed through a web browser. You can search for “manage printing” in your application launcher or simply navigate to http://localhost:631/
in whichever web browser you’d like to use.
This page will contain instructions for adding connected or network printers and also has information about the printers connected and current print jobs.
Closing Thoughts
In this guide, we learned how to setup a printer in Manjaro Linux. We saw how to use CUPS, HP Device Manager, and Manjaro Print Settings to accomplish the task. The process is pretty simple but you have to know where to get started. A final option would be to just download the driver directly from your manufacturer’s website, but the methods covered in this guide typically work better.