# The continuing Epson | Cups | Gentoo nightmare...

## leej

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.

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## bsolar

Moved from Installing Gentoo.

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## fleed

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.

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## leej

 *fleed wrote:*   

> 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.

 

I don't know what you mean.  It's not really a 'quality' issue, as a completed distorted printout issue after occasional world updates.  Somebody somewhere on these forums (can't find the post now) has even posted a scanned copy of a page.

One day perfect.

Next day completely screwed.

Nothing different in the logs.

...just looking for a decent binary distro now.  After using Gentoo for 18 months, I'm surprised to find there aren't any so I'll have to settle for a 'satisfactory' one.  One that doesn't shag the printer setup once a month.

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## ikokai

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  :Wink: . 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.

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## fleed

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

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## dsd

which printer driver are you using?

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## incubator

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?

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## derconny

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.

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## incubator

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  :Sad: 

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## buckoven

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 Evil: 

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...)

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