How to Fix Linux Printing Problem
When printing in Linux do you get a zillion blank pages or tons of pages with lines of weird nonsense across the top? Does this happen especially with Word documents that have images inserted in them and PDF files?
The fix is totally easy:
1. Go to Menu > All Programs > Printers.
2. Right click on your Printer and select Properties.
3. In Printer Properties select Printer Options.
4. Change "Print Quality" to something other than what is already selected.
5. Click Apply.
6. Click OK.
That's it! You don't even have to reboot to printer or computer.
My printer was set to "Normal Greyscale" so I changed it to "Normal" and all of a sudden everything worked fine.
Most printers have a bunch of settings to choose from.
For what it's worth I have an 8 year old Dell Inspiron with an ancient black and white Dell 1700 printer that makes the lights in the room dim every thirty seconds whenever it's turned on.
My printer driver is just the "Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic" generic driver.
I needed to get a bunch of stuff printed for a job interview: nothing but hieroglyphics were coming out of the printer. A text-filled Word document printed fine, but when I pasted in a photo of my degree and transcripts I got 20 pages of garbage printed out. The same when I tried to print a PDF of my last pay stub. I got sick of jumping from computer to computer and rebooting into Windows Vista (one of my desktops if dual boot).
Some people have to try a few different print quality settings before they find one that works. I lucked out on my first try.
Hope this helps, pass it along!
