Hi friends. i just wanted to leave some feedback. This was my experience with a wifi printer.
In other distributions setting up a printer is simpler as you just go to the settings menu and add printer from there. The first unintuitive part in opensuse is that you cant just do that because apparently Yast manages all printer configuration, but the KDE menu doesnt tell you, just an unhelpful error message. Then, even though I like Yast it feels like it makes this task overly convoluted. The hardest part is that it doesnt autodetect the network printer, and first you have to know which protocol the printer is connecting by. Socket, LPD or IPP. I had no idea so I had to guess and go by trial and error. Then you have to find out the device URI, which I had to make out from an information sheet I printed out from the device itself. It felt like a very ancient process.
Once the printer is detected the rest is easier as you just have to select the model, and even prompts you to install driver right there f its not already installed, without needing to go to software manager, which was great. I appreciate how complete Yast is in all its configuration options for all possible printers and connections, but it would greatly improve the process if it autodected the printer at least, or a bit more guidance.
Nevertheless, it was a success. Just one of the only mild inconvenieces Ive had with this amazingly robust and complete distribution
Most modern network printers advertise their presence by way of Avahi (using DNS-SD). CUPS provides the dnssd backend for this. For hosts with an active firewall, mdns (UDP port 5353) needs to be allowed for this to work. Perhaps that is what stopped your network printer being discovered? In any case I prefer to use the CUPS web interface in general.
openSUSE is the most robust and complete distribution I ever encountered. Maintenance is efficient and easy. No knowledge required. The hard part is finding the easy way. What works with any printer most of the time: refer to the installation guide of the printer. Mine says: use Wi-Fi Protected Setup. Running the installer completes the installation: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/547396-Fixing-Trouble-with-Brother-Printer
Thank you for your answers. deano_ferrari, yes I had read that it may have been due to the firewall, in a previous attempt I had disabled it completely it to see if that would do the trick but no luck. Maybe I had to restart? in any case i didnt want to tinker with it further and did it manually as described. What I gather from that wiki article is that USB connections are automatically discovered, but not necessarily network ones. However I didnt know about the CUPS interface, thanks
Now remains what seems to be a similar challenge, the network scanner (Ive never set up a scanner in any GNU/Linux distro). Ill see how that goes
No, disabling the firewall has an immediate effect. Without knowing your network environment and printer in question we can only speculate. Does the printer get reported with the following?
lpinfo -v
in any case i didnt want to tinker with it further and did it manually as described. What I gather from that wiki article is that USB connections are automatically discovered, but not necessarily network ones. However I didnt know about the CUPS interface, thanks
HP printers are often supported by HPLIP which has it’s own ‘hp-setup’ utility, other manufacturers may (or may not) provide their own configuration utilities to make the CUPS configuration easier. CUPS makes use of mDNS/DNS-SD for discovery… https://www.cups.org/doc/network.html
Now remains what seems to be a similar challenge, the network scanner (Ive never set up a scanner in any GNU/Linux distro). Ill see how that goes
If you need help, start a new thread with descriptive title, and let us know brand/model.