CUPS Commands

For the most part, you use CUPS lpr commands exactly like you used to with LPRNG:

lpr -Pprintername

And that's it!

However, specifying printer options with CUPS is done differently. With LPRNG, printing to transparency or disabling duplexing was done by appending ”–slide”, ”–duplex”, or ”–simplex” to the printer name.

lpr -Psutherland-slide
lpr -Pknuth --simplex
lpr -Psutherland --duplex

With CUPS, you can specify media options with the -o option to lpr:

lpr -Psutherland -o media=transparency
lpr -Pknuth -o Duplex=None
lpr -Psutherland -o Duplex=DuplexNoTumble

Printers which support these options:

• Transparency: color, evans, sutherland
• Duplexing: babbage, color, knuth, sutherland, warnock, ritchie

Banner pages can be supressed or forced with the option

-o job-sheets=none    (supress)
  -o job-sheets=pcn    (enable)

Multiple options are specified with multiple -o options:

lpr -Pknuth -o duplex=none -o job-sheets=none

Some newer GNOME or KDE applications may support manipulation of these options via the print dialog boxes, much like in Windows or Macintosh OS.