Got a new printer that does duplex printing. Linux support is great (thanks!), but I never noticed how horrible printing dialogs in Linux are…

First, tried printing in Firefox. A nice print dialog with tabs where you can select duplex and all that. Great! Next, tried printing from OpenOffice. Oh the horrors, they have their own print dialog with no possibility (apparently) to select duplex printing. So, I tell my wife to save as PDF and use PKDF printing. Printing in kpdf opens –how unexpected — yet another type of printing dialog with yet another layout. It took me 20 minutes to discover where to select duplex printing there (button “options”? no. Button “system settings”? no. button “properties”? finally!!!)

The KDE printer settings dialog apparently uses the same layout as firefox had used, while “kprinter” (the pde print thingie) uses the kpdf style dialog. What a mess.

I’ve come appreciate my Apple print dialog which looks the same all over the place (except when using OpenOffice that is….)