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Below you find a progressive scheme for installing your printer or scanner in Linux Mint.
Step 1: simply connect it and check whether it works
1. Installing printers and scanners in Linux Mint and Ubuntu, is usually very easy. You connect the printer or scanner, and it simply works rightaway: it's being detected and installed automatically.
This happens without any notification from the system, so that you might not even have noticed that everything is alright.
So first try to print a document in your word processor. Or try to make a scan with the application Simple Scan (which is present by default in all editions of Linux Mint).
In case of problems, try this:
Default: driverless printing/scanning with IPP
Starting with version 21, Linux Mint features driverless printing and scanning. Printers and scanners are detected and added automatically. Communication with the printer/scanner is being done through a standard protocol called IPP.
No drivers are needed; installed drivers are not being used.
So far, so good. But sometimes you've got to do the following, in order to get your printer/scanner to work (properly):
1. Is your printer/scanner not working (well)? The default driverless IPP takes priority as long as it’s installed; drivers won’t be used. So in order to try a driver instead, you first need to remove IPP support from your computer.
Proceed like this:
a. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)
b. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal:
sudo apt-get remove ipp-usb sane-airscan
Press Enter and submit your password. Please note that in Ubuntu the password will remain invisible, not even asterisks will show when you type it, which is normal. In Linux Mint this has changed: you'll see asterisks when you type. Press Enter again.
Then proceed with step 2 below.
Step 2: installing a printer manually
2. Now and then you need to install a driver and/or firmware for your printer or scanner. Below you'll find the how-to for two big brands:
HP printers (all models)
Samsung printers (all models)
No effect? Then proceed with step 3.
Step 3: add a printer with the application Printers
3. Sometimes it's necessary to add a printer / scanner to the system yourself, by means of the application Printers. In that case the application Printers already contains the driver for your printer, but you have to "indicate" the printer first.
So launch the application Printers. You can use the search box in your menu to find it; it's present by default in all editions of Linux Mint.
In Printers, click the button Add (with the + sign) and follow the steps it offers you.
Want more tips?
Do you want more tips and tweaks? There's a lot more of them on this website!
For example:
Speed up your Linux Mint!
Clean your Linux Mint safely
Avoid 10 fatal mistakes
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