Wireless Printing from Linux

I have been helping a friend move recently, and in the process we replaced a USB-connected printer with a WiFi printer. This was a big win, because now everyone in the house could print to it, without having to bother setting up one system as a "print server". This also happens to be the friend whom I set up with an Asus netbook running Linux Mint quite some time ago. So when I was there over the weekend I decided to see if I could set that up to use the WiFi printer. It took less than five minutes, going through Administration, Printers, Add a Network Printer, Find. I detected the printer, determined the type, set up the driver and print queue, and was ready to go. I printed a test page, it looked great. I printed a document, it looked great. End of task.

I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there to whom this is not news, and who have been using WiFi printers with Linux for quite some time, just as I have been using my Bluetooth printer with Linux at home. But I am equally sure that there are lots of people who still believe that this doesn't work with Linux, that it is a pain to set up or configure, that it is unreliable, and so on. That is simply no longer the case. It just works.

jw