2007/1/27, Rony ronbillypop@yahoo.co.uk:
Gnome in Etch is a bit buggy. Its printer tool allows you to select and choose printers but at the final 'Apply' button, the entire process vanishes into thin air. You are back to square 1.
I faced the same problem when tried to install a WIndows Printer Share and it seemed to be caused by missing smbclient package. After installing that it was able to configure it correctly.
I doubt the problem may be because of missing necessary packages, but not showing any error message is not helpful at all.
The best way to setup printers in _any_ linux distro is to ensure that CUPS is running and use a web browser and type localhost:631 in the address bar. 631 is the CUPS port for printing. I
It failed to get a printer working for me but hp-setup configured the printer correctly. If you have an HP printer you can install hplip and hpijs packages and then run hp-setup to automatically configure your printer (it detects the network printer automatically)
But one of my colleague had opposite result, he had a USB printer and hp-setup failed to configure it correctly but localhost:631 configured it correctly.
SO try both of these if you got an HP printer, local printer try cups first and network printer try hp-setup.
Your mileage may vary.
But Gnome in etch packs in some more packages and utilities compared to Ubuntu 6.10. It has a separate CD burning utility ( cannot recall its name) just like K3B in KDE.
brasero (not recommended - it failed me before) and GNOME Baker (it has improved much), K3B rocks!!
Since my college days till now it has failed only twice, one while writing over a network (has done that so many times) and another because the drive was not working properly.
Cheers Praveen