Help me save my wife from Windows - Printing Problems G85
 

Hi All,
My wife is, thankfully, running Linux now after years of being a Windows junky. I set her up with Ubunutu Dapper and so far she loves it. Her only really big complaint is that printing to our networked HP OfficeJet G85 doesn't work so well from photo applications (i.e. Gwenview, F-spot, Digikam, etc.).

System/Software Specs:

• Ubuntu Dapper (latest patch level)
• HPLIP 0.9.7 driver (Ubuntu base and suggested)
• Digikam 0.8.2 RC1
• Kipi plugins
• Dell Latitude D600 - 1.6GHz - 512MB RAM
• HP OfficeJet G85 with JetDirect

What happens (I'll talk about using Digikam for now) is that when she submits a print job, the CPU spikes and holds at or near 100% until the job is spooled. This process can take up to 10 minutes. Once the job is spooled the size of the file to be printed is massive, sometimes well over 100MB. Then to top it all off, after waiting 10 to 15 minutes, the image quality is poor - it has vertical streaks and is grainy.

This same laptop would print near photo quality images to the same printer whilst running Windows with little effort.

One thing that should be noted is that printing from other applications such as Firefox or OpenOffice is fast, but the image quality is roughly the same (grainy and streaked).

I've also tried using a postscript driver. This made the job print faster with not as much CPU saturation but the image quality was way worse.

So! Now my wife just wants to be able to simply print a picture without all of this hassle. She's considering moving back to Windows. If anyone here can help me fix this for my wife and keep her off of Windows I would be very happy (and so would she!).

Cheers,
CTD

Tell me too if you get it working. I've never got to print a good-quality image from Linux; text files go nicely, and just about everything except images (I'm talking about photos now, but I think it's the same for drawn images too). This far I've done the image editing and such jobs on Linux and then switched to a Windows machine for printing; the printer drivers I have been using simply seem to suck, or then I'm just an old granpa who doesn't know what he's doing; I've gone through every possible setup, every detail, quite a lot of formats and a few printers (all have been HP printers..hmm, could this be the case in my case?)

Good luck, you. Oh one more thing; seems like printing from Gimp didn't succeed even as well as from other apps. I guess I just had the wrong software..I'm hoping so. Well printing is not that big a job for me, I can print my few images from a Windows machine since it seems like they'll be around for a long time anyway..

LinuxPrinting.org recommends the hplip package (include the hpijs driver) for this printer. They also have a link to the PPD file (hplip might already have it) and a link for spooless printing.
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_pr...-OfficeJet_G85

I've upgraded the hplip driver from the standard ubuntu dapper 0.97 to 1-6.6a and still the print process consumes copious CPU and takes forever to print (using the kipi plugins) and the print quality is only marginaly better than with the 0.97 driver that comes stock with Ubuntu Dapper.

I've even tried drinking several Coronas and still can't get the printing to work better! :)

Any more ideas from anyone?

Thanks,
CTD