Configuring and testing printers involves being in the possession of one, and having access to the root account. If so, you may try:
Installing the printer using the GUI on your system.
Printing a test page using the GUI.
Printing a test page using the lp command.
Print from within an application, for example Mozilla or OpenOffice, by choosing -> from the menu.
Disconnect the printer from the network or the local machine/print-server. What happens when you try to print something?
The following exercises can be done without printer or root access.
Try to make PostScript files from different source files, (e.g. HTML, PDF, man pages). Test the results with the gv viewer.
Check that the print daemon is running.
Print the files anyway. What happens?
Make a PostScript file using Mozilla. Test it with gv.
Convert it to PDF format. Test with xpdf.
How would you go about printing a GIF file from the command line?
Use a2ps to print the /etc/profile file to an output file. Test again with gv. What happens if you don't specify an output file?