MX Linux Forum

I found the driver as suggested & installed - still unable to print. I understand that you question my concern over a printer which would be unlikely to be the one which will be the user’s target. However, as this in my first machine for this project I need to be confident that it can print - and this is the only printer I have.

Jeffrey wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2023 11:33 am I found the driver as suggested & installed - still unable to print. I understand that you question my concern over a printer which would be unlikely to be the one which will be the user’s target. However, as this in my first machine for this project I need to be confident that it can print - and this is the only printer I have.

A better plan of attack would be to ask your friend the councillor to loan you one of the printers they plan to use in the project and the work on setting it up.

Ok, I really appreciate all your help, encouragement and advice in this.

Best wishes - Jeffrey

@Jeffrey Also, if your ok with it obviously, you might volunteer a couple of hours to help getting the machine setup for printing etc. (if they need it.) I provided 10 hrs of tech for my first large computer donation to the boys school, (they were all 'linux?) lol... using something like teamviewer or anydesk you could help them remotely.

Thanks again. BTW, It seems that Wing Python and Lazarus Pascal are not now available for 32 bit machines…..

I’ll take a look at teamviewer and anydesk.

j.

Lazarus still shows 32bit linux downloads ?

https://www.lazarus-ide.org/index.php?page=downloads

For Python, both Eric and Idle are good and will do a job for learning how to.

Hi

IMHO gutenprint is not answer. Not sure what the package name on 32 bit is....but on my 64 bit its called printer-driver-escpr

Changing maker to Epson I can see on 64 bit......... models ET-2800 & ET-2810 ....suggesting 2810 try first

https://imgur.com/h3rn8Pv

This came as a surprise to me, we used to include the printer-driver-escpr package preinstalled in our official ISO builds!

My suggestion is to install the packages for the most common printer models you have in your counrty/area. Here it's Brother, HP and Epson. HP drivers are already installed through the packages hplip and hplip-data but their UI element hplip-ui is not. I do not recommend you preinstall the UI, leave that to the individual users. There is however no harm in preloading the following;
printer-driver-brlaser
printer-driver-escpr
printer-driver-gutenprint

Note, the modern Gutenprint will download drivers on-demand as printers are set-up, rather than put them all on your system at installation.

MX is shipped with the ahavi daemon enabled at startup, so it will detect all networked printers that use Rendezvous or Bonjour to advertise their existence on the network. With the appropriate driver packages installed, the correct driver should be automatically added and the printer should just appear in the CUPS list of configured printers. This does however cause some conflicts and often the printer is set up with the Bonjour URI, which is doomed to fail.

Special note to be aware of with networked printers, I always set up or change the URI for network connected printers to use ipp/ip-address:631/ipp This seems to never fail, however, I also always pin printers to a single IP address at the router first, then using the printers control panel. I found as a mobile IT Tech that most of my call-outs for network printer related issues were due to dynamic IP addressing issues. With a dual-point static address setup, the network could be on the brink of falling over but the printer would still work.

Lots of good advice here - thank you everyone!