How to "Print to PDF” from any native program : Ubuntu (6.06.1)

I swear one of these days the world will be overtaken by .pdf files. You see them everywhere! Instruction manuals seem to come as .pdf instead of print, maps & instructions online are in .pdf format. Now, using Ubuntu, how can we make our own PDF? Yeah, we can do it in a few steps below.

Install cups-pdf support using: sudo aptitude install cups-pdf
Edit the configuration just a titch: sudo gedit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
Change RunAsUser Yes to RunAsUser No, save the file.
Restart CUPS: sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

At this point the process and system is in place to be able to “Print to PDF” we simply need to configure the printer to allow it as an option.

Navigate to “System” > “Administration” > “Printing”
Select “New Printer”
Make sure “Local Printer” is selected and “Use a detected printer: PDF Printer”
Click “Forward”
Navigate to “Generic” manufacturer and select “Postscript Color Printer” (or closest match)
Save & Finish your changes

At this point you can simply Print to PDF from any application. Simply navigate to the “Print” option and select your new printer. When you’ve notified the system to print using the new PDF Printer it will automagically save a PDF file within a new “PDF” subdirectory of HOME.

There you go. Who needs Adobe anymore to create a PDF file. …and who said Linux wasn’t ready for the desktop?

technorati tags:pdf, adobe, create, cups, printer

7 thoughts on “How to "Print to PDF” from any native program : Ubuntu (6.06.1)”

jjv 2007/01/08

and for ubuntu 6.10? there is no RunAsUser option in /etc/cups/cupsd.pdf

NT 2007/03/13

Remake of the step 2

$ cd /usr/lib/cups/backend
$ sudo chmod 4755 cups-pdf

For me works fine 🙂

Richard 2007/04/13

Thanks NT – brilliant!

viiv 2007/11/09

It seems to only print the visible data when printing web pages. Does anyone know if there is a way to print more than just the visible data?

Rich 2007/11/27

I’ve followed the instructions 100% above, and am trying to print from firefox. I select file > Print and select the postscript-colour-printer-rev4 which is the closest match to the above.. and when I do, I get nothing to allow me to put in a location or filename(not sure if I should anyway) but nothing happens either. The print dialog box shows the state of the print set to: Paused: job-hold-until-specified. If i resume it just does the same again. Am i missing something?

Cheers