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Install a network printer and scanner on Linux

Tested with a Samsung Xpress C1860FW with Fedora 33 Beta

Linux support for printers straight after an install is excellent, even on a FOSS-only distro like Fedora. To add your network connected printer, I’d recommend finding instructions from the printer manufacturer but failing that (or if you don’t want to download their driver package), you can probably get it working without downloading a single driver.

Printer function:

Head to Settings > Printers and click Add…

Empty Printer pane in Settings

Type in the IP address of the printer, and then click on one of the options in the list, and click Add (mine gave three options – I picked C1860, but LPD and JetDirect work fine too, you just need to pick the printer model from a list with either of those).

Adding a printer in Settings

To do a test print, click the cog icon next to the printer and then Test Page.

Cogs

Test Print

    Scanner function:

    Adding the scanner is quite simple too. You’ll need to open up a Terminal window and open up the /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf file.

    sudo nano /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf

    Find the line in the file for your printer (Hint: CTRL + W brings up search in Nano – type the query and then press enter).

    Searching for 1860 in Nano

    Once you’ve found your printer in the list, comment out the usb 0x4e8 xxxxx line by putting a hash character in front (#), and then make a new line and type tcp <ip address> (with the IP address of your printer, of course) and exit + save changes (Hint: in Nano press CTRL + X, then type y, and press the Enter key).

    #Samsung C1860FW
    #usb 0x04e8 0x346b
    tcp 172.16.0.101
    USB line commented out with tcp 172.16.0.101

    Finally, open up GNOME Scanner (or any scanning software using the SANE protocol) and scan away.

    Search for Document Scanner

    Click Scan

    Click Scan in the top left
    See your scan

    Look ma, it scanned!

      Jonathan Procter

      Linux, Unix, and Windows server sysadmin.

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