I am glad you figured out you key problems. Permit me to assist you
around the edges.
xpdf
does allow you to select both the printer and the pages to
print.
If you click the little "printer" icon to print, it brings up a screen
that second has a check box for what pages to print and first shows
a "default command to execute". You will notice that that command is
lpr. You can change the command right there. You can change it to
Code:
lpr -P theprinterIreallywant
. Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out
what
theprinterIreallywant is called (as far as lpr is concerned).
I figure it out as follows. First I use that web interface for CUPS we have discussed and see what printers are shown. Then, to be doubly sure,
I do an
Code:
lpq -P theprinterIthinkIreallywant
and see if it returns valid
status or an error. Then of course you could always print a short text
file to check for real.
Finally we can talk religion. I do use Ubuntu when needed, but before
using Ubuntu, I always try Debian. The success of Ubuntu is based on Debian -- they just use Debian
testing or even Debian
unstable in their
releases.
Debian stable is criticized for being slow moving -- but that's
because Debian stable
works. Ubuntu really is more Windows like.
They make it possible to be unaware of all the Linux command line tools, and they release unstable code.
Anyway -- there is a new debian stable,
called lenny. You might try it.
At the command line level Ubuntu and Debian are equivalent (except for the weird sudo stuff in Ubuntu ... but
I prefer just to have a root user anyway). At the GUI level, Ubuntu and
Debian are pretty similar. Debian just doesn't have that splash screen
and the brown colors. (I like blue better anyway!)