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How to Easily Share Printers from the Gnome Desktop


Printer printing photo with person working on laptop in background

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GNOME has been my desktop choice for a while.

And for anyone who might think that adding or sharing a printer over a network on Linux is a challenge, believe me… it’s not.

Case in point, I had to replace my aging Brother monochrome laser printer which I have been using for about five years.

I opted to use a similar model, but one without a wireless option that I never used.

I took the printer out of the box, plugged it in, and clicked Add printer in the Settings app.

Also: How to easily position your mouse pointer in Ubuntu and other GNOME-based Linux distributions

Pop!_OS found the printer, automatically added the driver, and I printed within five minutes of unboxing the hardware.

But I’m not the only one who needs to use that printer. My wife actually prints more than I do (returning labels and knitting patterns seems to be a daily routine in our house), so I have to provide a printer for her Chromebook.

Luckily, the process is super simple on the GNOME desktop, and I’ll show you how.

How to Easily Share Printers from the Gnome Desktop

Request

To successfully share the printer in this way, you will need a running instance of the GNOME desktop, which can be located on Linux distribution of your choice.

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You will also need the printer connected and working on your local desktop. That’s it. Share that printer.

Log in to your desktop and open the Settings app. From within Settings, locate and click the Printers entry, located near the center of the left navigation.

The Printers entry in the Gnome Settings window.

Adding a printer is easier than you think in Linux.

Photo: Jack Wallen

In the Printers window, click Additional Printer Settings.

List of printers in Gnome Settings.

My new Brother laser printer is listed in Gnome Settings.

Photo: Jack Wallen

In the resulting window, right-click the printer you want to share and click the checkbox associated with Shared.

Right click menu Additional Printer Settings in Gnome.

Printer sharing takes place in the Additional Printer Settings window.

Photo: Jack Wallen

Install the GNOME printer server.

Now that your printer is shared, you will need to publish it to your network.

Photo: Jack Wallen

Printer access

When you need to add a printer to another machine on your LAN, all you have to do is enter the Linux machine’s IP address and the shared printer will appear in the list.

Of course, depending on the operating system you are adding the printer to, you may have to install a driver. I was able to successfully add this printer to both ChromeOS and MacOS without having to download and install drivers.

And that’s all there is to it. I told you it was very simple. You can now print to that shared printer from any machine on your LAN (provided it has been successfully added).

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