[SOLVED] 1 printer, 2 Mint PCs: only 1 can print

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Philip H Jones

[SOLVED] 1 printer, 2 Mint PCs: only 1 can print

Post by Philip H Jones »

I have the following two machines, both of which have fresh installs of Mint 18.3 from the same image file:

Acer Laptop: "inxi" yields

CPU~Dual core Intel Pentium B940 (-MCP-) speed/max~1878/2000 MHz
Kernel~4.13.0-43-generic x86_64 Up~1 min
Mem~519.8/3798.3MB
HDD~500.1GB(2.9% used)
Procs~180
Client~Shell inxi~2.2.35

Acer Desktop: "inxi" yields

CPU~Quad core Intel Core i5-2320 (-MCP-) speed/max~1602/3300 MHz Kernel~4.13.0-43-generic x86_64 Up~12 min
Mem~2256.5/7881.5MB
HDD~3500.7GB(13.1% used)
Procs~197
Client~Shell inxi~2.2.35

Printer: Epson NX625

The laptop allowed me to install the printer, which it saw immediately when I went to add it. Print Manager found the driver on its own; I don't recall having to do anything but pick from a list
The desktop also sees the printer as a network printer, finds its Host IP address and its Queue, offers a connection, but when I click "Forward" to let it find the driver, it hangs and never locates or installs anything.

Searches on Epson's site and general third-party sites don't turn up anything I'm able to install.

Questions:
  • why can the laptop take care of this and the desktop not?
  • what can I do about it?

I could of course hand off files to be printed from the desktop to the laptop, but that's cumbersome and not possible at all if the laptop is unavailable.
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pdc_2
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Re: 1 printer, 2 Mint PCs: only 1 can print

Post by pdc_2 »

Hi Philip; welcome to the Mint forums;

If I search the Epson site for
stylus nx
I can find a generic driver listed that covers the nx620 and nx635, so I wonder if we will be lucky and find it works for your nx625;

If you go here http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/du/02 ... e43b62db49 and click the ACCEPT at the bottom of the page, you can select epson-inkjet-printer-escpr_1.6.20-1lsb3.2_amd64.deb and if you select OPEN as you start to download it, hopefully gdebi installer will leap in; and offer to install; if instead you SAVE it on download, you should find it in the Downloads folder and double-click to get it installed; that should set up a printer registration;

I am assuming it would get installed on the Desktop computer

If you go PRINTERS folder; on the laptop that you say works; right-click on the icon for the EPson; look in MAKE & MODEL; what does it say there? Seems the default drivers on the Mint system list some NX variants; but not the 625
Philip H Jones

Re: 1 printer, 2 Mint PCs: only 1 can print

Post by Philip H Jones »

A very interesting result: I clicked, I accepted, I downloaded, I installed the driver as you specified. Along the way I didn't recognize any of the pages I stopped at; they weren't any I'd seen in previous searches for a driver. The very last message I saw after the debi installer did its thing was, "Same driver already installed" (or words to that effect). I still had to install the printer, and once again the desktop's Printer Manager saw the Epson printer as a network printer. I was able to print a test page, and then to print a two-page LibreOffice document. What I was unable to do, which I had been able to do before I had to re-install Mint on this machine, was to print two-sided: this driver doesn't seem to offer that as an option. (And no, I don't remember where I got the driver that worked back before the re-install.)

When I look at the laptop's Printer Properties for this printer, it appears as an Epson Stylus NX630. I open a multi-page document, send a Print command, and in the Print dialog I'm offered the two-sided printing option. In Printer Properties/Settings I see as Make and Model: Epson Stylus NX630 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.11. Still puzzled as to why the same ISO image managed to produce such different results on two admittedly different machines by the same manufacturer.

But no matter; now at least both devices speak to the same printer, even if in slightly different accents. Thanks very much for your help.
pdc_2
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Gutenprint and Epson's drivers

Post by pdc_2 »

thanks Philip;

so the portal to the Epson linux drivers is here http://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/searc ... ch/?OSC=LX and it is where I start: "Stylus NX" gave me the link to the generic driver

so with linux, you can read the source code of all the files that are open-source; so to run the machines that connect to a linux computer; folks have written "drivers" to talk to as many machines as possible;

so the Gutenprint project; http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/ has aimed to make drivers available for printers; so if one joins a printer to a linux computer, the instinct of the operating system is to look in its own list of possible printers; and be very helpful; and configure it for you ........ hence one computer has a gutenprint reference; the other must be using the driver file from Epson

for those that appreciate quality; and want the best, try Turboprint http://www.turboprint.info/printer_Epso ... NX625.html they have been offering drivers for many years: they started in the days of the Commodore Amiga; you can evaluate a free copy and they ask for a fee after a month; once folks have used turboprint, they don't seem to go back to ordinary drivers.
Philip H Jones

Re: 1 printer, 2 Mint PCs: only 1 can print

Post by Philip H Jones »

Thanks for the tip about TurboPrint. It certainly does what the description says it will, and while I don't do a lot of photo printing, its promise to do a better job with that task is appealing. What gives me pause about shelling out 29 euros (I think) for a printer driver on steroids is that I fear my Epson NX625 is nearing the end of its smooth-running phase and is starting to develop unpleasant quirks. As much as I hate the idea of scrapping a printer (because it has no user-serviceable parts inside), I'm reluctant to commit to a printer driver that I bought to drive a particular printer that I no longer have. I don't want to be limited to my next printer being from the list that this particular driver is designed for. Or do I perhaps misunderstand how limited a given version of Turboprint really is?

Philip
pdc_2
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Turboprint supported printers

Post by pdc_2 »

so Turboprint will support all the devices listed here: http://www.turboprint.info/printers.html so really all the inkjet printers sold these days for Epson, Canon and Brother;

the page I gave the link for was just detailed what it would offer for the NX625 but for Epson alone you can see big coverage http://www.turboprint.info/printers_Epson.html
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