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Print to PDF on Linux — set up a system-wide PDF printer with cups-pdf (2026)

cups-pdf gives you a virtual printer that writes a PDF instead of printing to paper — available system-wide to every application, from the command line, and over the network from a headless box. Install it, restart CUPS, and your PDFs land in ~/PDF.

TL;DR — install cups-pdf, restart CUPS, and you get a virtual “PDF” printer that any application can print to. The files land in ~/PDF by default. On Debian/Ubuntu that’s sudo apt install printer-driver-cups-pdf && sudo systemctl restart cups.

This post first went up here in 2013 as a two-line note — apt-get install cups-pdf, restart CUPS, done. The tool is still the right answer in 2026, so here is the current, fuller version.

Do you even need this?

Most Linux desktop apps already print to PDF on their own. GTK and KDE print dialogs (so Firefox, Chrome, LibreOffice, GNOME apps, etc.) have a built-in “Print to File → PDF” option. If that covers you, you’re done.

cups-pdf earns its place when you want a real, system-wide printer queue rather than a per-app export:

  • Available to every application, including ones that have no PDF export of their own.
  • Usable from the command line and scripts.
  • Shareable over the network from a headless server, so other machines can “print to PDF” to a central spool.

Install

cups-pdf is packaged on every mainstream distro:

# Debian / Ubuntu / Mint / Kali
sudo apt install printer-driver-cups-pdf      # older name: cups-pdf

# Fedora
sudo dnf install cups-pdf

# Arch / Manjaro
sudo pacman -S cups-pdf

Then (re)start the CUPS daemon so it picks up the new backend:

sudo systemctl restart cups        # systemd
sudo service cups restart          # older sysvinit

The package’s post-install step normally registers the queue for you. That’s it — you can print to PDF now.

Verify the printer exists

$ lpstat -p -d
printer PDF is idle.  enabled since ...

You’re looking for a queue named PDF (sometimes Virtual_PDF_Printer). If it isn’t there, add it by hand — first find the exact model string CUPS registered:

$ lpinfo -m | grep -i pdf
CUPS-PDF_opt.ppd  Generic CUPS-PDF Printer (w/ options)

…then create the queue with that model:

sudo lpadmin -p PDF -E -v cups-pdf:/ -m CUPS-PDF_opt.ppd

Or do it in the GUI: Settings → Printers → Add, pick the Generic CUPS-PDF printer.

Where the files go

By default, output lands in ~/PDF/ for the user who submitted the job. The location is set in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf:

$ grep -i '^Out\|^AnonDirName' /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf
Out ${HOME}/PDF
AnonDirName /var/spool/cups-pdf/ANONYMOUS

Change the Out directive and sudo systemctl restart cups to send PDFs somewhere else. Jobs that arrive without a resolvable home directory (e.g. from a shared network queue) collect under /var/spool/cups-pdf/.

Once the queue exists, it’s a normal CUPS printer:

lp -d PDF report.txt          # any printable file
lpr -P PDF document.ps

The resulting PDF shows up in ~/PDF. Set a default page size if the wrong one keeps appearing:

lpoptions -p PDF -o media=A4   # or media=Letter

Headless / network “print to PDF”

On a server with no desktop you can still run the whole thing: install cups + cups-pdf, enable the daemon, and share the queue.

sudo systemctl enable --now cups
sudo lpadmin -p PDF -o printer-is-shared=true

With CUPS configured to listen on the network (Listen/Allow in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf), other machines can add this IPP printer and “print to PDF” remotely — the PDFs collect in the spool on the server. Handy for appliances and apps that only know how to talk to a network printer.

Gotchas

Nothing appears in ~/PDF

Check the job actually completed and read the CUPS log:

lpstat -W completed -o
sudo tail -n 50 /var/log/cups/error_log

Then confirm the Out path in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf is what you expect.

Permission denied writing the PDF

~/PDF has to be writable by the CUPS spool. If you print across a shared queue as another user, output lands under /var/spool/cups-pdf/<user> or …/ANONYMOUS instead of your home directory.

Fedora: SELinux blocks the write

If a job silently disappears on Fedora, check for an SELinux denial (sudo ausearch -m avc -ts recent) — the cups-pdf backend writing to a non-default directory is the usual trigger.

FAQ

Do I need cups-pdf if I use GNOME, Firefox, or Chrome?

Probably not — those export PDF directly from their print dialog. Reach for cups-pdf when you want one system-wide queue, command-line/scripted output, or a network print-to-PDF server.

How do I print to PDF on Windows or macOS?

You don’t need cups-pdf. Windows has a built-in “Microsoft Print to PDF” printer; macOS has a PDF dropdown in every print dialog. This post is Linux-only — and, as the 2013 original put it, setting this up on Linux is the easy case.

What’s the difference between this and “Print to File”?

“Print to File → PDF” in an app’s dialog is per-application and exports a single file. cups-pdf is a genuine CUPS print queue: shared across apps, scriptable, and shareable over the network.

Which package name — cups-pdf or printer-driver-cups-pdf?

On current Debian/Ubuntu the package is printer-driver-cups-pdf; cups-pdf is kept as a transitional name and still works. Fedora and Arch call it cups-pdf.

Summary

  • sudo apt install printer-driver-cups-pdf (or your distro’s equivalent), then sudo systemctl restart cups.
  • A virtual PDF printer appears; verify with lpstat -p -d.
  • Output defaults to ~/PDF, configurable via Out in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf.
  • Print from any app’s dialog, from the CLI with lp -d PDF file, or over the network from a headless box.