# Does Lexmark E120N work in linux? [solved]

## paddlaren

Hi!

I'm about to buy a Lexmark 120E bw laserprinter. Before I buy, I would like to hear if anyone have tried it with Gentoo or any other Linux-distro? I plan to connect it to my network  as it supports that.

Any experience is welcome.

// ErikLast edited by paddlaren on Sun Jul 30, 2006 9:28 am; edited 1 time in total

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## jeanfrancis

Hi !

I successfully installed my Lexmark X1150 using this wiki:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Lexmark_Printers

... By the way, it don't list your printer. It means that the guys who participated to the wiki never successfully installed your printer model (maybe they don't tried...)

Hope somebody else will help you... But if you really plan to buy it, be sure somebody installed it on Gentoo  :Smile: 

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## paddlaren

I sold my Lexmark Z55 last week (!) since the installation was messy with rpm:s etc. And there, on the wikki, there is an ebuild that solves the problem. I have hade it for weveral years....  :Mad: 

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## dek

Did you buy the E120N, and if so - was it much of a hassle to set it up under Gentoo? As for network printers the price is hardly beatable...

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## paddlaren

 *dek wrote:*   

> Did you buy the E120N, and if so - was it much of a hassle to set it up under Gentoo? As for network printers the price is hardly beatable...

 

Hi!

This is amazing! I received the printer less than 3 hours ago and was just done with the installation when I got the notification.

I bought the printer, connected it to the network, let the CUPS discover it and installed it with the HP Laserjet PCL6.0 drivers and it work directly. I would prefer the postscript drivers though it seems they are missing in some package.Will try to find it out later on.

I also tried to download the Red-Hat drivers from Lexmark, did a rpm2tar and installed them. It didn't work. It installs in /usr/local/lexmark but seems to depend on /usr/lexmark-something that was not included. Well, will probably give it a nice try later on. The drivers are supplied for Linux and I guess it shouldn't be that hard to make an ebuild for it. But I gues that there are allways some %(==(&%/¤%¤"#"/#(# licenses that make it impossible.

So, with 3 papers printed and no problem with the PCL-drivers I say: this is a great printer  :Smile: 

// Erik

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## dek

 *Quote:*   

> This is amazing! I received the printer less than 3 hours ago and was just done with the installation when I got the notification.

 

Good timing.  :Very Happy: 

My only worries about buying this printer are the high printing costs. I've read that they are the highest in its class and that the shipped toner is only filled for 500 sheets of paper.

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## paddlaren

 *dek wrote:*   

> 
> 
> My only worries about buying this printer are the high printing costs. I've read that they are the highest in its class and that the shipped toner is only filled for 500 sheets of paper.

 

Yes. The spec says 500 sheets and then you buy a new one that lasts for like 2000 sheets. It's common that the included one is a sneeky one. I heard that HP is one of the few that supplies the full version for some of the printers. The HP-1020 is not one of them as I remeber (can be wrong, my girlfriend has one).

By the way...

In Kubuntu I installed the drivers from Lexmark that should support the E120 but if it does, you have to chose another printer model. The E120 is not an option there. I use the generic PCL-6 driver here. 

// Erik

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## dek

Good point about the other printers. And taking into account that it has a network interface the price is still fair price even with an additional toner. With my limited printing needs that would probably last for a few years.  :Smile: 

Is there any downside when you use the generic PCL-6 driver? Does that mean, that you can't use all the printer features or something?

Sorry for sounding stupid, but all the printers i had to deal with supported either postscript or hpijs, i have no experince with PCL. You don't need a ppd or something?

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## paddlaren

 *dek wrote:*   

> Good point about the other printers. And taking into account that it has a network interface the price is still fair price even with an additional toner. With my limited printing needs that would probably last for a few years. 
> 
> Is there any downside when you use the generic PCL-6 driver? Does that mean, that you can't use all the printer features or something?
> 
> Sorry for sounding stupid, but all the printers i had to deal with supported either postscript or hpijs, i have no experince with PCL. You don't need a ppd or something?

 

Havn't figured out what PPD is yet. And I think PCL is a HP-version of PS and rather generic. Heard that there was some licence-costs related to PS and HP sought to find a way out of that. I think HP have a good sense of standardization when needed. 

Concerning the functionality I yet don't know. It can print stuff. The KDE print manager allow you to do a lot of things like 2pages/page and so. You can chose to print first leftsides,  put papers back and print rigth sides and get a manual duplex. None of this seems to require anything from the printer. The printer reports 1200DPI and it seems usable from the KDE Print manager. 

This is about what I can imagine I need of a printer.

By the way, the printer has a web-based management system that gives alot of information that probably is located in the windows-driver. This is now mangeable from the web-browser.

Are there any features you think I should try? I just wanted a cheep networked BW laserprinter that can be put on standby for month with no harm.

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## dek

Thanks for all the information, very appreciated!

 *Quote:*   

> Are there any features you think I should try?

 

I can't think of more features.  :Smile: 

Probably a draft mode, but i suppose that is chooseable in the kde dialog, not?

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## paddlaren

You can select 300DPI if you whant. With 20 pages/min I relay don't se the reason for my own purpuses.  The old "need more than one page an hour" reason from the 24-pin matrixprinter is not realy relevant nowdays  :Smile: 

// Erik

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## paddlaren

Now I have had the Lexmark-printer for quite a while. Am perfectly satisfied.

The driver I use is HP PCL6.

The only hatch is that I have to connect to the printer using the IP-adress. When I reconfigured the network it lost the static DNS entry and stop working. This is more related to my home-network though. 

In every other aspects I just love it!   :Cool: 

// Erik

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## dek

Cool, thanks for posting again. I still haven't decided for a printer, been ogling with a Kyocera (FS-820 or FS-1030D) in the mean time, but now i'm seriously reconsidering the Lexmark...  :Laughing: 

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## paddlaren

I have to admit that it is extremly simple to share a USB-printer on the network using KDE Printmanager and CUPSD. It shared my girlfriends printer (she is runing Kubuntu).

It's been a shile since though here is how I think I did it:

* You have to edit the CUPSD config so that the CUPSD process is accessable from other computers.

* On the other computer, add the printer as a remote printer. The printmanager searched the network for it. I got it working when I used the raw printer driver.

* Get on printing, using someone elses printer   :Twisted Evil: 

What I whant to say whith this? With CUPSD  a network connection is not essential. Though connecting the printer to the network makes me less dependent of the USB-drivers and stuff. I depend of the network anyway... No Firefox - No life   :Mad: 

I have no clue what so ever how to share printer with M$-Windows. I do no M$-Windows nowdays.

// Erik

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## dek

After some delay i finally got the E120n. The generic pcl driver (Generic PCL 6/PCL XL P. pxlmono) is dog slow for me. Sometimes it takes more than 10 minutes to start printing. The page itself is printed super fast once it prints, but then it takes another 10 minutes for next one. Really weird - i can watch the outgoing traffic on the ethernet device, which is only a few kb per seconds. Also tried usb, which didn't seem to make a difference.

So i stressed Google a bit and it brought up a real ppd [1] for the E120n. According to the author [2] it's the MacOSX ppd patched to work with Linux. With this ppd the printer literally spits the paper at me.  :Very Happy:  It just seems to have some problems with fonts. I printed a PDF which used a Arial like font, but ended up with a monospace font. The generic ppd (once it printed!) always used the correct font.

Just wondering if you ever tried the ppd...

[1] http://lex120n.fateback.com/

[2] http://lists.freestandards.org/pipermail/printing-user-lexmark/2006/003290.html

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## paddlaren

Hi!

I have had no problems with the preprocessing on my computer. I use the driver HP LaserJet Series PCL6 CUPS v 1.1. I don't know if this is the same as the generic one and don't remember why I chosed this one. 

I think I have used a PostScript driver on some installation but it is default included in the Gentoo CUPS ebuild. 

// Erik

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