Samba printing no longer available in KDE w/ Fedora 40?

Ask Fedora
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1

I’m using the KDE spin.

In Fedora 38, I had the following dialog when trying to add a Windows printer via SAMBA:

(Well, shucks, Fedora Discussion is giving me errors and preventing me from uploading a screenshot with less than 100 KB… it’s just the “Add a New Printer” dialog from KDE, which has an item “Windows Printer via SAMBA” that allowed me to fill it in and use it, and it worked.)

Now, with Fedora 40, I have a fancy new interface, but with a “This feature is not yet available (smb)”.

Am I missing a package, or is it really intended that I can no longer use a Windows printer with KDE?

2

Added f40, printing, samba and removed kde

3

Added kde

4

Printer support across all distros has prioritized IPP support so maybe neither alternative. Linux developers are a scarce resource so legacy device support features are often lost with new versions if they are not in high demand. There are workarounds and hardware boxes that provide IPP for older printers.

5

Thanks, that’s a reasonable explanation.

Unfortunately, this is in a corporate setting, which is using a “Secure Printer” system by Canon, in which people log to a central server using LDAP, send the file to be printed there, then physically approach a printer, log in, choose the file from the central server, and then it is printed in front of them (avoiding “oops I sent a confidential file to a printer in another building” and “oops I clicked Print by accident and didn’t realize it”).

In this setting, the only way I managed to make it work with the Secure Printing system was via Samba, and even then, it barely worked (no error messages when settings were incorrect). If there is a way to use it with something other than SAMBA, I will gladly try, but unfortunately this is yet another case of “this is a Windows company, we buy hardware that is barely compatible with other OSes”. Extremely frustrating…

6

Possibly. The smb printer backend is provided by the package samba-client, so do check if you have that package installed.

7

Been there. Done that. That was a pain.

8

I do have samba-client installed, so that’s not the cause. But your message gave me an idea, I re-googled about it, and found this thread, that mentioned system-config-printer. So, while not KDE, it still offers a graphical interface that does support setting up a SAMBA printer. So that’s a possible workaround for now.

9

You can also use your browser to connect to http://localhost:631/admin to administer printers. And then you have the non-gui program lpadmin.

10

Indeed, but CUPS’ and lpadmin interfaces are quite different from the one I had seen in Fedora 38/KDE. The system-config-printer dialog is very similar (the fields are almost identical), so that my colleagues might find it familiar enough not to complain about it :slightly_smiling_face: