Udo's Techblog

The next impossible task I just tried is... printing something. Of course it didn't work. Here's what happened:

I'm not gonna go into details how and why I couldn't connect to a SMB printer, or how painful the configuration dialogs were, because luckily I was able to connect in direct mode via TCP with a dedicated network printer. The test page printed out great, so I was (however briefly) optimistic. Then came the first test: actually print something out. Let's say, a PDF for example. Doesn't work. All you get is a message saying that whatever you're wanted to print there couldn't be converted into PostScript. And that's it. Incessant fiddling with the printer options didn't change a thing.

Again, let me point out how painless this works on OS X: most network printers are auto-discovered, all necessary drivers get installed automatically, it just works. While Windows is a lot uglier and more painful to configure than OS X, it still manages to print something at the end of the day.

I recognize this might be one of the many openSuSE 10.2 problems and not something inherent to the printer model the distro uses (which would be CUPS, I believe). But how on earth does something like this slip past quality control?