Remember to turn on printer advertising in CUPS so that Chrome OS Native printing picks up the new printer on the local network. You could scale this for a SOHO environment up to a few printers (don’t call us for support!).īuild a CUPS server using a raspberry PI so that you can connect a ‘legacy’ printer via network or USB to the server. To get a single non-cloud printer working with your Chromebook, you have options. Look for a solution that doesn’t involve deploying anything on-premises (servers, management stations).ĭirectprint.io also has free home user versions of our printer drivers – see the ‘Related’ tab on the store for more information: ///webstore/detail/wifi-printer-driver-for-c/hhcgnlnhaapiekdelngjichnccjfkbnc External print servers /Cloud connectors/Intermediate Windows PCs/other hacks Our advice to Education and Enterprise admins: User and group-based (teachers/students) deployment of printers?.Want to enforce budgets/mono/duplex/paper/toner saving or secure print?.If you have a mixed-vendor printer environment (HP, Xerox, Brother, etc), you need a 3rd party universal solution. 3rd party solutions from //directprint.io, Printerlogic, Papercut, and some others are now available for Chrome OS. 3rd party solutions – such as directprint.ioĭesigned for administrators looking for advanced configuration, logging, audit, budgeting, cost, and policy control. According to Google at I/O ’19 Chromebooks now account for 21% of all laptops sold in the US, showing consistent year-on-year growth. Vendors seem to be catching up with the popularity of Chromebooks and have identified an opportunity to improve the reliability and features. HP also includes administration options via G Suite, using configuration files.Įxpect more printer-vendor driver solutions to appear in the Chrome Store over time. Excellent work HP! The app is hugely popular – with millions of weekly users and provides all of the functionality that home users on Windows and Mac have come to expect. HP Print for Chrome was one of the early examples of a print stack ported from Windows/Mac to run on Chrome OS. Several printer vendors were quick to introduce app-based printing solutions aimed primarily at home users to the Chrome Store. If you’re an administrator who needs to track printing you will be disappointed. Recent (2021) administration improvements include better policy support (duplex, color) and further deployment options. Administrators who are used to Windows print management solutions will be disappointed with the admin options provided within G Suite. It feels like CUPS was included to provide extra printing options for home users, those with ‘legacy’ (non-Cloud Print compatible, or USB printers) to help Chrome OS get to the mainstream.įurther improvements like printer auto-discovery and configuration have helped home users, but it’s not perfect. For example, we had a cheaper Dell laser printer and needed a custom driver, which was very difficult to install (we know, we tried – for hours) and gave up. Except that, unlike on Mac and Linux, Chrome OS doesn’t have quite the same level of flexibility to install extra drivers. This was seemingly a smart move by the Chrome OS team, who were responding to grumbles with Cloud Print. In that regard, it’s tried and tested, well developed and maintained, respected, and flexible. In early 2017, the Chrome OS team introduced the CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) into Chrome OS.ĬUPS is an Apple open source project which provides the backbone for printing on Mac OS and most Linux distributions (e.g. It’s a shame it didn’t scale for enterprise. Google should be applauded for trying to bring printing into the 21st century. In case you missed the quiet announcement, Google Cloud Print officially died on January 1st 2021 Save for a multitude of reasons, it isn’t a big hit with Enterprise and Education users. The promised land of printing: no print servers on-premise, platform-neutral (worked on Chrome OS, Windows, Mac).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |