Command Line Printing ¶

A list of useful commands and options to print documents from the command line.

This assumes a CUPS server, as commonly configured on most Linux distributions.

Printing ¶

To get a list of all printers, with details:

$ lpstat -p

just the list of all available destinations on the local network:

$ lpstat -e

the current default one:

$ lpstat -d

To get the list of options available for your printer use:

$ lpoptions [-p <printer_name>] -l

there will be a line like (note that different printers may have a more specific option that you need to enable):

ColorModel/Print Color Mode: Gray *RGB

and then you’ll have to add -o ColorModel=Gray to the lpr command line, e.g.:

$ lpr -o ColorModel=Gray <filename>

Using the command ssconvert from Gnumeric:

ssconvert <source_filename> <destination>.pdf

works with any format supported by Gnumeric, including of course xls and ods.