help with printing

English Applications
#1

Hey all,

So I’ve had this standalone box forever and finally thought of a use for it besides collecting dust.

Can I hook a USB HP printer up to my linux box and use it as a network printer?

I’m relatively a rookie at this so bear with me.

Thank you!!!

#2

When you do not even explain which distribtion of Linux that is (the forums here are about openSUSE) and what version, you are only posting ariddle with a lot of guessin here. We are volunteers, but not clairvoyant.

#3

Sorry…it’s a Suse box. Output from uname -a:

uname -a
Linux linux-s5ud 4.4.104-18.44-default #1 SMP Thu Jan 4 08:07:55 UTC 2018 (05a9de6) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

#4

openSUSE 42.3 I think.
And that is out of support so I would Upgrade the System to a supported one.
Or use the Leap 15.2 beta, this will next month released.

#5

so the current one won’t support a usb printer?

#6

It probably will but there are no repos for that version so if you require a driver or other software to make it work it is not easily available

#7

Ok…guess I have to upgrade. Can you send a link to a supported version to download?

Thank you so much for your help.

#8

https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Distribution

#9

Apart from your problem and the answers so far, some technical remarks.

If you want to know and/or to show what openSUSE you have

cat /etc/os-release

And when you want to show computer text here:
There is an important, but not easy to find feature on the forums.

Please in the future use CODE tags around copied/pasted computer text in a post. It is the # button in the tool bar of the post editor. When applicable copy/paste complete, that is including the prompt, the command, the output and the next prompt.

An example is here: Using CODE tags Around your paste.

Back to your question.
You should explain much, much more. What have you done so far? where got you stuck? As I read your information, you seem to have a HP printer (no type given) and it can be connected using USB. And you are staring at it now to expect a miracle to happen.
Did you connect it? did you start YaST > System > Printing? Did you do any of the obvious things that an openSUSE system manager does?

We are not clairvoyant and have no idea about what you know about openSUSE, what you did. We know nothing what you do not tell us.

And yes, I am with the others that it is much better to install a current version (15.1) for several reasons:

  • no security updates for a long time already, thus, when you are connected to the ineternet, increasing danger of being hacked;
  • software repos are gone, you may be able to find archieves with repos, but that is a lot of extra work and they are frozen in any case;
  • people here most probably do not have such an old system and thus can not re-create what you do, they may have forgotten some peciliarities of the old version and have to give advise purely based on their memory of a few years ago.