Hey all.

So I've been printing with CUPS on Linux ever since RedHat/Fedora switched to it from lprng. I bought a HP LaserJet 1022 (USB 2.0) printer about 9 months ago, and it has about done what I've needed it to: prints emails and stuff. Most of the time. I had only ever used this printer with CUPS, so I assumed that the printer was as fast as it had been. It generally prints a page, then the green light blinks for about 3 to 10 seconds (depnding on what's being printed), then the next page comes out, etc. Even pure ASCII text has a slight delay between pages.

Then I hooked the printer up to my laptop running Windows XP. I thought I'd install the HP supplied Windows drivers just to see how the printer performed there. It's like a completely different machine: the performance is night and day different in Windows. It doesn't matter if I'm sending 100 PowerPoint slides (9 slides per page) or a 4 MB PNG file--this thing takes like 3 or so seconds to spit the first page out and then there are no delays between pages. This is all on the maximum DPI (1200 DPI).

Is the first scenario about what I should be expecting from Linux/CUPS? I know HP puts a lot more development time into the Windows drivers so I know better than to always compare Windows to Linux (since they're apples and oranges in a lot of ways to begin with), but usually they're at least competitive. I daresay the printer is 3 times faster in Windows than Linux--if not more.

I'm running CUPS on FC5 using the HPLIP drivers. The printer is connected to the system via a USB 2.0 compliant cable, and /var/log/messages reports that it is being detected as a USB 2.0 device.

Thanks for shedding any light on the situation!

Try changing the printer settings in the CUPS interface.

Try to print at a lower resolution and if you're using a colour printer, use B&W mode for plain text. That speeds up printing and improves quality as well.

I don't notice much difference between Windows and Linux printing with my HP PSC 1315 MFD.

I think the HPLIP drivers are good enough. Configure CUPS by typing http://localhost:631 in your browser window.

I have never had such a problem with CUPS. I have a Photosmart 7660 which is connected to a machine that dual boots Linux and FreeBSD. The printing is spot on, on both OSes and there are no delays between printing from one page to another. I wonder whether its a problem with the drivers for the model of printer you are using.

Also running a Photosmart 7660 on CUPS and there is no pause or anything between pages, just print print print. Try playing with settings, or even updating your CUPS installation.

Thanks for your replies.

I almost wonder if this is specific to HP LaserJet printers, as these are the only onese I've had experience with. I previously used an HP LaserJet 6L (parallel) and the performance gap between Linux/CUPS and Windows was of similar magnitude.

I have configured CUPS using the web-based interface before, but I don't see the advantages of that over using Fedora's graphical frontends. Just for the heck of it, I looked at the web-based interface again and I still don't see anything special.

As for "downthrottling" the quality: This printer is already operating at half of it's capable resolution (600 dpi vs. 1200 dpi). If anything, I wish it was higher; but none of the config programs allow me to see higher than 600 dpi for this printer. And still, having to half the resloution just to get reasonable performance isn't what I want to do.

Any other ideas? Perhaps anybody who is using a similar printer?

Slackware has a specific cups addon for HP printers, maybe there is something like that for your distro? Or if not, you can always get the source from a slackware mirror and compile for your system. I don't know if that's the problem or not, but I would assume the package was created for a reason.

regards,
...drkstr