I've taken an old PowerMac G3 that was being dumped and installed Ubuntu Linux 6.06.1 LTS on it. The installation went as a charm; all HW was detected automatically – it even autodetected an old Microsoft wireless mouse I had lying around.

Now I want to install my ethernet-connected Lexmark E120n printer, but that proved difficult. I tried locating drivers on the Lexmark homepage and found Debian drivers. Since Ubuntu is built on Debian I figured that it would work – however, only i386 drivers are supplied.

What do I do? Is there some collection of Linux drivers out there that I don't know about? I've considered attaching the printer directly to the Mac using USB to see if Ubuntu will automagically locate and download the drivers, but I would like to solve this problem "manually" if possible.

Best regards
Tord Strømdal, Linux Newbie

Try OpenPrinting (formerly LinuxPrinting.org)

Lexmark printers are not all that well supported in Linux, but your model seems to be

Thank you for your reply. I know I haven't made this too easy on myself, choosing the G3 as my first Linux box, but I'm still hoping I can get it to work.

I looked through the OpenPrinting database and found the E120n in there. However, there was no actual driver, only a reference to a "Recommended driver: pxlmono" with a link to the home page.

Reading through the page I found no link to any driver and no instruction on how to proceed, other than the "Generic instructions for: CUPS, LPD, LPRng, PPR, PDQ, no spooler". The referenced "PPD-O-Matic" did not contain the E120n and no useful information could be found on the pxlmono homepage.

I tried using the CUPS administration pages to install a printer, but the list of printer drivers available did not contain the E120n, nor was I able to use any other driver.

Any other suggestions, or tips on how to proceed with the information at hand?

Best regards
Tord Strømdal

Click on the 'Drivers' link on the openprinting site, then scroll down to pxlmono

I tried that, but the end result is the same as searching for the pinter and clicking the link on the serach result page - no driver to download and no posibility to create PPD file for the Lexmark printer.