[sf-lug] new Epson printer. whee.

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss at sfo.com):

>    I ran into some problems with libgtk and pipslite-wrapper
> but I finally ran across some information that Gutenprint
> would work without the pipslite-wrapper and it did!

"pipslite" is a proprietary, binary-only printing driver set that one
can download from Avasys or (presumably) Epson.  One would select the
NX515 PPD.  As a minor version of dependency hell, one also needs the
libltdl3 package (or whatever it's called for one's distro of choice).

The open source alternative is, as you say, Gutenprint.

The proprietary TurboPrint driver set also works.


For the scanner functions, the SANE project supports the Epson Stylus
NX515 using the sane-epson2 backend ("driver").  That is, the
_development_ version of SANE does; this printer/scanner is so new that
the ordinary stable release of SANE reportedly doesn't support it at
all (but, of course, you can try).


I notice that you can reach the printer three ways:  USB, ethernet, and
wireless (802.11g/n).


>    This Epson printer is on sale thru Saturday at Office Depot.
>    It doesn't use an external power supply and it is not much
> bigger than my old HP.

But it is going to cost quite a lot per page, in ink cartridge supplies.
Going by experience, you're going to replace the colour cartridge most
often -- and please note that the printer will refuse to work unless you
have ink in both the B/W and colour cartridges.