Which driver (and PPD version) is my printer using?

As printing is sometimes unusually slow on my system, I'd like to check which driver my printer is using. I'm not sure if the driver version and the PPD version amount to the same thing; if you know the difference, plz briefly explain.

Neither http://localhost:631/ nor the standard printing config GUI seem to be offering any insights re driver / PPD version numbers.

Solution 1:

There's version info in the PPD file itself (it's only text).

You can see this for yourself with the command cat /etc/cups/ppd/YourPPD.ppd | grep Version where YourPPD.ppd is the name of your PPD file.

Here's an example from my system for illustration purposes.

~$ cat /etc/cups/ppd/DCP7065DN.ppd | grep Version
*FormatVersion: "4.3"
*FileVersion: "1.00"
*LanguageVersion: English
*cupsVersion:   1.1
*PSVersion: "(3010.106) 3"

According to what I see here, my ppd file is Format 4.3 and it shows that I'm using the postscript 3 driver version 3010.106

For more about postscript versions and the differences between them see this.

For more about the creation of PPD files look here

Solution 2:

In the standard printer config GUI:

• Printer Options
• scroll down, PPD Version