I want to upgrade gutenprint to 5.2.3 to enable my new printer. I have downloaded the tar and unpacked it - where do I go from here please??
There should be a README file.
See if it’s clear enough.
If in doubt, just ask. 
There was,but first and second reading didn’;t seem to help a lot! I hoped there was a simpler instruction.
Toast, have you figured out how to upgrade gutenprint? I have loaded Suse 11.1 on my system.
I was able to download gutenprint-devel-5.2.3-106.1.x86_64.rpm and install. However it picks up gutenprint-5.0.2 which causes a conflict. Really annoying, I can see my printer, but it won’t run.
I had gutenprint-5.2.3.tar.bz2 and installed it (I think) in both the /usr directory and /usr/local directory.
It appears that my install of gutenprint-5.2.3 did not take. I used ./configure followed by make followed by make install commands.
Anyone care to make a suggestion?
Also I hope there is a good reason why Suse 11.1 did not come with an updated version of gutenprint. 
Regards,
Anthony
Didn’t you get any errors?
I installed it just for the fun of it (:)) and I get the new drivers, didn’t try them though.
toastrack, prior to installing it you need to install some dependencies: gcc, libpng-devel, libtiff-devel, cups-devel
Then open a konsole in the same folder where you downloaded the gutenprint tarball.
Type: tar -xvf gutenprint-5.2.3.tar.bz2
then: cd gutenprint-5.2.3
./configure
make
Now “su” to become root and:
make install
That should be it.
Jop, thank you. Yes, once I installed the dependencies the install went fine.
Regards,
Anthony
Glad to hear it is working!
Jop, Do you know why this same installation would not work for Suse 11.0?
Regards,
Anthony
Better late than never 
I checked and you are right, it seems Yast is, for some reason, not detecting the new gutenprint drivers after compiling. I didn’t look into it but if you use CUPS administration (localhost:631 in your browser) you’ll be able to use the new drivers there.
The Epson Stylus Photo RX680 does not work with the default install of any OpenSUSE product, including 11.1.
The reason is that the version of gutenprint shipped with 11.1 (5.0.2) is horribly outdated and does not include the drivers for the RX680 and many other modern printers. Given the rate at which model lines change in the printer industry, this is inexcusable on SUSE’s part, but that’s another discussion.
Here’s how I fixed the problem. YMMV
First, run yast2 and run the Software -> Software Management module. Type guten in the search window and if you already have gutenprint installed, use the management too to delete it (right click, delete) and apply.
Now that you have the old version removed, go download the latest version from sourceforge.
I found it at SourceForge.net: Gutenprint - Top Quality Printer Drivers: Files
At the time I wrote this, the latest version was 5.2.3.
Download the tar.gz package.
Now I’m not going to go into minute detail on how to do this, but you need to extract, compile and install this package as root. Do a little googling and RTFM if you don’t know how to use the Linux command line and compile packages. If you haven’t learned this yet, you should.
Anyway, here’s the short version, from a terminal session (CLI)
- su to root
- extract the archive (tar xjvf <archive.version.tar.bz2)
- cd to the resulting folder
- type ./configure and wait
- type make (or make -j2 to speed things up a little) and wait
- type make install
If you finish all this without errors, congratulations, you’re pretty much done. If you had some errors or dependency problems, read the errors and do a little research. You should be able to install all the dependencies right from yast2’s package manager, and probably right from the openSUSE DVD or default online repositories. I didn’t have to install anything on my system.
Now, go to yast2 again.
Go to Hardware -> Printer
When the printer module opens it’s window, click on Printer Configurations (make sure your printer is already hooked up and powered on).
Now click on add. It will scan for printers, and then find your newly compiled and installed gutenprint driver and recommend it.
Now click on the gutenprint driver and hit OK. etc. etc.
Once you’re done following the prompts, you’ll have a functioning RX680.
Once you are back to the main Printer Configurations screen, click on the RX680 in the printers list and click on the edit button below. You’ll see the modify <printer name> window.
select the RX680 and then click on the All Options for the current driver button.
This will get you the big list of options for your printer.
The one’s I’d worry about for now are:
- Page size (make sure it’s the right one for your country etc.)
- StpQuality / Print Quality (This sets your default print quality. You can always choose a different one at print time. I set mine to Standard, but you might also want FastEconomy if use it every day for email etc. or Best if you only print Photos with it)
- Input slot (I set mine to Front because I leave regular paper in that and I leave photo paper in the rear slot)
- Media type (set it to match your default paper type. eg plain, glossyphoto, etc.)
That’s pretty much it.
Go print excellent colour from your RX680.
Note: My system consists of a fully updated 11.1 install running 64 bit on an AMD Phenom. However, these instruction should pretty much work on anything.
Good luck.
thanks Tachyon_01 for giving the guide on what worked for you and how you did it;
sounds like you are not completely new to linux, and have some expertise and experience before?
There seem to be differing views on when you change from user to “substitute user” (also referred to as root) in the installation of a tar. file
you recommend getting stuck in and doing in as you do the first step;
others would recommend one waits until the
make install
step is reached;
glad it worked well for you to get your printer running;
Epson do offer printer drivers from their site;
Linux Driver [AVASYS CORPORATION]
I have never been sure how well they are received; but they are certainly available
No problem. I know I was frustrated with the situation and not being able to find a solution. So I figured I’d make it work myself and share how I did it to save others the same frustration.
As for the su->root thing. My way works just fine, but a lot of people have this “do as little as possible as root” mantra that they let creep into all their methodology. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. But it’s really not as big a deal as most of them make it out to be if you pay attention to what you are doing and understand the risks.
I haven’t tried the Epson driver because it seems to be a bit of a hack to install it. I wanted something that worked clean with my OpenSUSE install.
And no, it’s not my first time out with SUSE.
SUSE was not the first distro I used, but I switched to SUSE with version 5.2 if that tells you anything. My first Linux experiences were when kerenels had numbers like 0.9x and I started out with Slackware. I used to regularly test various distros as part of my job so I’ve tried most of them, but never found anything to make me switch from SUSE. Though the disgraceful quality of the KDE4 default install in 11.1 made me pretty mad for a while. But now that I’ve switched back to 3.x, I’m happy again.
Anyway. I really do hope my little howto helps someone else get a great printer working with a great OS.
Oh, and BTW. I guess I forgot to mention that the scanner works great too if you use the Epson proprietary iscan drivers and scan interface from the repo-non-oss repository.
The card reader works out of the box.
pdc 2 wrote:
>
> thanks Tachyon_01 for giving the guide on what worked for you and how
> you did it;
>
> sounds like you are not completely new to linux, and have some
> expertise and experience before?
>
> There seem to be differing views on when you change from user to
> “substitute user” (also referred to as root) in the installation of a
> tar. file
>
> you recommend getting stuck in and doing in as you do the first step;
>
> others would recommend one waits until the
>
>
>> make install step is reached;
>
> glad it worked well for you to get your printer running;
>
> Epson do offer printer drivers from their site;
>
> ‘Linux Driver [AVASYS CORPORATION]’ (http://tinyurl.com/d66cyh)
>
> I have never been sure how well they are received; but they are
> certainly available
They work well on my older Epson CX6600. There scanner driver for this
printer works better than the ones that came with my DVD. I’ve used the
scanner version of ISCAN, downloadable from the above site.
>
–
Russ
openSUSE 11.1 (2.6.27.21-0.1-default x86_64) KDE 4.2 release 106, Intel
DX48BT2 Core 2 Dual E7200. 4 GB DDR III GeForce 8400 GS, 320GB Disc (2)
OK, I’ve installed OpenSUSE 11.2 x86_64 on my machine and I’m pretty disgusted that Gutenprint has still not been upgraded in this version. This makes OpenSUSE 11.2 very backwards as far as it’s support for modern printers. Come on OpenSUSE team, get with it!
Now, to those of you stuck with the same problem with 11.2, I used the same procedure I outlined above to install Gutenprint on OpenSUSE 11.2. This time 5.2.4 was the latest Gutenprint source available.
Here are some tweaks I made to the install:
- While in YaST2 removing the gutenprint package, I also made sure to install the gimp-devel and gtk packages.
- Instead of using …/configure to setup the build, I used ./configure --enable-user-install
- Looking through the output of configure, you can see this section below which shows that the Gimp plugin will also be built and installed (you must have Gimp installed of course).
Release: gutenprint 5.2.4 generated on 26 Jul 2009
Features:
Build CUPS: yes, installing in /usr
Build CUPS 1.2 enhancements: yes
Build CUPS PPD files: no
Generate PS level 3 CUPS PPD files: yes
Build genppd statically: yes
Build Ghostscript IJS driver: no
Build Foomatic data: no
Build enhanced Print plugin for GIMP: yes
GIMP plugin will be named: gutenprint
Install plugin(s) in home directory: yes
Build EPSON Stylus utility: yes
Build test programs: yes
Build testpattern generator: yes
Don’t forget to go back and change the default options for the new printer after you install it.
Tachyon