# Getting Started

This chapter of the &kdeprint; Handbook will walk you through most of the configuration or selection options of &kdeprint;. It will mainly deal with &CUPS; in this version, as the author is most familiar with it, and also because &kdeprint; started off with supporting &CUPS; best. Later versions of the &kdeprint; software and editions of this handbook will support and explore other printing systems more closely.

## Selecting Your Print Subsystem

You need to define your print subsystem, before you are able to install any printer with the &kdeprint; framework. There are two areas where you can define this: either in &kcontrol; (The Printing Manager section), or directly and on the fly from the print dialog.

Navigate to K Menu Preferences System Printing Manager. At the bottom you can see a button that lets you select which printing subsystem you want to use. In &kde; 2.2 you can choose from the following alternatives:

- &CUPS; (Common &UNIX; Printing System)

- Print through an external program (generic)

- LPR (Standard BSD Print System)

- Generic &UNIX; LPD print system (the default)

- RLPR environment (print to remote LPD servers from the command line)

Of course, the chosen system must be installed, and up and running on your box prior to your selection, or before it takes effect.

On it's first startup, &kdeprint; will try an autodetection. This only works for:

- &CUPS;, as it is checking first for a running &CUPS; daemon

- LPD, as it is checking for a running LPD daemon, plus a `printcap` file.

The system you choose must be installed on your system prior to your selection. The author's personal recommendation is &CUPS;.

Once autodetected, chosen, or changed, the active print subsystem will take effect for all &kde; applications. Different users may have different print subsystems in use, if those do exist on the computer and are compliant with each other. Their settings are stored in the `kdeprintrc`. This file is unique to every user, and is normally installed in `$`HOME`/.kde/share/config/kdeprintrc`.

This file is not intended to be directly editable, and all available options can be set from the &kdeprint; &GUI;.

You may even select a different printer subsystem, on the fly, from the &kprinter; dialog box.

## Working with the Printing Manager

Once you have chosen your preferred and installed print subsystem, you are ready to investigate, configure administer and work with this system through the &kdeprint; framework.

Navigate to K Menu Preferences System Printing Manager. In the right part of the window you will see at least 4 printers predefined. These are the virtual or special purpose printers, explained in section . You will probably see a toolbar with 13 icons at the top of the window, and at least 4 tabs in the lower half of the window, labeled Information, Jobs, Properties and Instances.