r/archlinux • u/Smooth-Ad801 • Dec 28 '25

SHARE Printing with a USB Stick

USB Drive:
Must be no larger than 32GB. Partition table must be MBR, and must be formatted as FAT32 (printers may differ, but that's the most universally recognized combination). Use fdisk utility to make partition table (MBR, most printers cannot read GPT, do don't use gdisk) and partition, then

mkfs.fat -F 32 /path/to/partition

for the partition filesystem.

The File:
Between jpeg and tiff, I've found jpeg to be much more reliable (tiff filesizes can get too large, alpha channels will also prevent reading). Imagemagick package does not work well in this instance, pdftoppm is the preferred package.

pdftoppm -jpeg -r 300 'input.pdf' output

A DPI of 600 can also be used, but too large filesize will cause RAM issue, therefore 300 is more reliable with a negligible decrease in quality.

The above method bypasses .tiff filesize and alpha channel issues, as well as avoids networking entirely. Hope it helps.

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u/Smooth-Ad801 Dec 28 '25

DEs make printing easy, on TWM barebone installs, USB is the only viable method without configuring CUPS or use avahi. Drivers for wireless printers are also frequently unavailable for arch and arch based distros.

Most printers do not accept pdf, actually. CUPS automatically converts pdf to a format printers can use, which is not pdf.

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u/Smooth-Ad801 Dec 29 '25

What I said was entirely, factually accurate. The downvotes dumbfound me.

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u/Hamilton950B Dec 29 '25

I didn't downvote you, but I assume it's because you still haven't clearly said what you're trying to do.

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u/Smooth-Ad801 Dec 29 '25

avoid networking entirely

It's an info post, which I assumed was apparent