The continuing Epson | Cups | Gentoo nightmare...

leej · Apprentice Joined: 18 May 2002 Posts: 280

What is it in world updates that continually fu**s up Epson > gimp-print (and gimp-print-ijs) > cups printing? From March 2002 to July(ish) 2003, I had few problems with Gentoo (1.1a back then), Cups and my Epson Stylus Photo 830 printer. And when problems *did* occur, they were easily resolvable. Then the brown stuff hit the fan. Printing works but quality is appalling and the whole copy is afflicted by a banding effect. Originally ISTR a reinstallation of psutils fixed the problem. Only for it to reoccur a month or so later. Numerous searches later (which reveal many others frustrated with the same situation) I merged something (god knows what) that fixed it again. And now, again, hardly 4/5 weeks later, printing is fu**ed up after a world update again. Exactly the same problem but none of the previous remedies fixing it.

I've reinstalled everything from scratch using the Gentoo Printing HOWTO docs. I've followed all kinds of advice posted since August. I've farted around with cups for the best part of two days. But to no avail. There's not even a single error in the logs at the highest debug level. To print out, I'm having to reboot into Knoppix or Windows and it's come to the point where I'm just going to have abandon Gentoo. But what a waste. I love Gentoo and I can't imagine computing life without Portage, but at the end of the day I *need* a reliable printing subsystem.

bsolar · Bodhisattva Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 2764

Moved from Installing Gentoo.
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fleed · l33t Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 756 Location: London

From the logs do you know if it's using ghostscript or gimp-print? That might explain most of the problems you get with quality.

leej · Apprentice Joined: 18 May 2002 Posts: 280

ikokai · n00b Joined: 10 Nov 2003 Posts: 14

I had a hard time when I installed my epson with cups and gimp-print, so after I installed everything succesfully, I told to gentoo not to update my printer things anymore

. And for the world update: I am always really careful with it, if something isn't broken then you don't have to update it.

fleed · l33t Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 756 Location: London

injket support in gentoo is a bit lacking. Luckily I upgraded mine to a cheap and cheerful samsung laser and it's the cat's pyjamas! But I don't think that helps you at all, sorry mate.

If you're willing to debug the "quality" (or lack thereof) issue, you could try doing what cups is doing manually. Try running the same filter it's using and then try changing the options to the filter until you get something reasonable. Once you get it working save all the steps you had to go through (maybe by posting to this forum!) and whenever you -u world and have a problem, go back and check if the updates changed any of the settings you had modded. I've heard that print quality with inkjets in linux can be better than the native win drivers.

Another thing you could try is to have a look at the linuxprinting.org forums, news server to see if there's anything like what you're seeing there. They're usually very good at helping out, specially for common printers.

Cheers

dsd · Posted: Tue Nov 18, 2003 6:17 pm Post subject:

which printer driver are you using?
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incubator · Guru Joined: 05 Jun 2003 Posts: 584 Location: Belgium

now there is one thing I dont't understand.
A few days ago I asked a suitable printer for linux and I was told epson c82 (inkjet) printers are quite good, but after reading this I suddenly get to hear that inkjet support is lacking?

derconny · n00b Joined: 24 Feb 2003 Posts: 11

I'm using an Espon C84 and it's working really good. Before that I used an C70 which was working fine too.

So, no problemes here with Epson and Gentoo.

incubator · Guru Joined: 05 Jun 2003 Posts: 584 Location: Belgium

well thats just what I dont understand :s
on linuxprinting.org the c84 is rated as "works mostly" while the stylus Photo 830 is rated as "works perfectly"
so I dont understand why this person has problems with it for so long

buckoven · n00b Joined: 24 May 2003 Posts: 34

hi there!
got the same problem.
when i first installed gentoo (1.4_rc2, it was) i was unable to get my epson stylus photo 915 working.
upgrading to 1.4 and playing around with cups a bit and voila, my printer worked smoothly.
two weeks ago i did a world update und now it's screwed again.
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! :twisted:

i re-emerged gimp-print and cups, and now i even can't find a driver in the cups config dialog (there has been one before the world update...)