Access Dell network printer from Lubuntu

Ubuntu Version: 24.04

Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma v 5.27.12

Problem Description:

There is a working Dell 3110cn Colour Laser Printer on the network. Other computers running Windows can access it without problem.

I’d like to print to it from my Lubuntu machine. I have no idea how to set it up.

What I’ve Tried:

sudo avahi-browse --all -t -r

It returned info regarding my other network printer, a HP ENVY 5540

Also, info about a Sky / Amazon / Firestick TV somewhere (think that’s my lodger’s)

But, no mention of the Dell printer.

Also tried a new patch lead on the Dell but no change

A driver for linux was once available from Dell’s website but it seems it’s no longer offered by them,

Dell-Color-Laser-3110cn-noarch.rpm

https://mans.io/files/viewer/3212/438

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverid=r130088

I found a promising 3rd party page for a driver

https://www.helpdrivers.com/printers/Dell/3110cn_Color_Laser_Printer/

Currently investigating, maybe using Alien to convert .rpm to .deb if something usable at link above.

Can you clarify what you’re using

Your title says

Access Dell network printer from Lubuntu

and later mention it too

where Lubuntu uses the LXQt desktop. But you quoted your desktop as being something else

Lubuntu doesn’t use the KDE Plasma desktop, Kubuntu is the flavor that offers that desktop.

1 Like

Sorry. I got that information from System Tools > System Monitor > Tools > Launch info centre > Software, at the top. Lower down it does also mention, Qt Version 5.15.13; elsewhere I see LXQt Version:1.4.0

cat /etc/os-release reports “Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS”

Certainly installed it from a Lubuntu iso though, and it identifies itself as Lubuntu on startup.

With the printer, I’ve managed to extract Dell-Color-Laser-3110cn-1.0-1.noarch.rpm from the driver CD downloaded from the above 3rd party site, and convert it to dell-color-laser-3110cn_1.0-2_all.deb using Alien

I’ll try to install

nginmu@pc:~/Desktop$ sudo apt install ./dell-color-laser-3110cn_1.0-2_all.deb
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
Note, selecting ‘dell-color-laser-3110cn’ instead of ‘./dell-color-laser-3110cn_1.0-2_all.deb’
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
kdeplasma-addons-data libgl1-amber-dri libglapi-amber libkf5unitconversion-data libkf5unitconversion5 libllvm19
plasma-dataengines-addons
Use ‘sudo apt autoremove’ to remove them.
The following NEW packages will be installed
dell-color-laser-3110cn
0 to upgrade, 1 to newly install, 0 to remove and 112 not to upgrade.
Need to get 0 B/17.4 kB of archives.
After this operation, 169 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 /home/nginmu/Desktop/dell-color-laser-3110cn_1.0-2_all.deb dell-color-laser-3110cn all 1.0-2 [17.4 kB]
Selecting previously unselected package dell-color-laser-3110cn.
(Reading database … 376187 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/dell-color-laser-3110cn_1.0-2_all.deb …
Unpacking dell-color-laser-3110cn (1.0-2) …
Setting up dell-color-laser-3110cn (1.0-2) …
N: Download is performed unsandboxed as root, as file ‘/home/nginmu/Desktop/dell-color-laser-3110cn_1.0-2_all.deb’ couldn’t be accessed by user ‘_apt’. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied)
nginmu@pc:~/Desktop$

Oh! I think I got it working.

This page was useful

https://askubuntu.com/questions/960121/lubuntu-16-04-add-network-printer

On my system it wasn’t System tools > Printers, it was Preferences > Printers

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