I'm trying to use CUPS to get my printer working, and as it's Z700 based. CUPS shows it listed as a USB device, but the driver is not available for slackware. I have seen it RPM based, but it complains that various libraries aren't installed to run it correctly. What do I do? Thank you.

I have an epson stylus photo R200, and there wasn't any printer for it either in the slack 10 (or 9.1 for that matter). I downloaded and compiled the gimp-print distribution (5.0.0.beta1). After some tinkering I got CUPS to find my new drivers and I'm now printing! Don't forget that one of the advantages of slackware is that most packages are easy to get to work by just compiling.

Thank you lucho, following your advice solved my lexmark z715 problem too. way easier than messing with lexmark's linux dev kit.

added the following on 10/6/2004:
forgot to mention that lucho's advice worked for me slackware 10

Hi,
I bought a Lexmark Z515 and there are no drivers for it. The kernel (2.6.7) recognizes it as Z500 Series. Because there are no drivers, I can not print with cups.
Can you give me some informations on how to use the gimp-print drivers. I have installed the latest version 5.0.0_beta

Thank you

A lot of people have been emailing me about this so here is what I did, if it still doesn't work for you, I don't know what to say.

After installing the latest gimp-print beta as suggested by lucho I then (in slackware) pulled up my printer configuration via kde. At that point I scrolled through the entire list of detected devices, my printer was in fact detected under the "usb" heading. I then selected that detected device.

Then, I made sure CUPS was set as my print spooler (I think this is the clincher as none of the other printer spoolers list the detected driver). Now, I then chose to add a new printer class. On manufacturers list I chose lexmark and in the right side was a driver I didn't install prior named the name of my printer as detected in the first screen. I selected that and began printing.

That's what I did. honest.

on 10/7/2004 the following was added:
I was using slackware 10

MAny thanks for the direction to go to get my lexmark Z705 printer recogized by linux, I did everything that was in the previous thread, and Mandrake 9.1 did not recognize the printer and did not have any drivers for z700, only the Z seriers up to Z53, then Z83, no Z700. What am I doing wrong? Any ideas?

Lucho:
I have an Epson Stylus Photo R300 (similar to yours I suppose) but i'm having a problem with it:
when I print documents (ie. PDF files or the printer test page) the printer starts printing all right, but then randomly halts in the middle of printing a page. If i try re-printing the document, it stops randomly again, at another page or at another section of the same page... I uninstalled LPRng and re-installed CUPS from the Slackware 10.0 CD, deleted and reinstalled the printer, and have not been able to fix the problem.
kernel 2.4.26
CUPS 1.1.20
Gimp-print 5.0.0-beta2 drivers
Thanks for any help.

I think this has a lot to do with the distributions, as I have just recently switched to gentoo and guess what. Now my printer doesn't work, by following the above instructions. Well it should work, but unfortunately gimp-print beta won't compile and I don't really have a clue as to why it won't compile on gentoo whereas it compiled fine on slackware so for now i'm back in the boat with some of you and hopefully when i get around to the hacking bit again, we'll come up with a better solution to this one problem.

laters.

I have a z602 working perfectly. I downloaded the driver from Lexmark and tweaked it a bit (it was a RH RPM). I decompressed it, extracted the rpms, converted them to .tgz, checked some things and modified some things to make it run in my system and made new .tgzs. (with makepkg).

After that i installed the driver with pkgtool and so far it works perfectly. I don't know how about the z715 but it shouldn't be so different.

I dont know why it is so damned difficult to get things to print in linux, oh thats right, cause every one else is stuck to the tit of Micro$oft, and there for have the monopoly. Some products wont give the source to linux devels to make it work in linux, so when that comes up, people have to relay on reverse engineering, and we all know how long that can take, and how buggy it can be. I have gone to Lexmark's website, though not within the past 4 weeks, and they still dont have a driver for the z715, the z602 and z715 are however two different printers and commands that needs to be sent...`
Is any one out there running Mandrake 9.0+ that si able to get these damn things to work!? I agree that is has to do with the dist of linux..

The trick is to go to Lexmark's web page and download the driver for Z600. Do not worry, this drivers works for Z500, Z600 and Z700 series.
Now, because you have Gentoo, you need to follow the instructions on this page
http://www.gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Lexmark_Printers

I believe similar instructions would apply to those who have slackware. For the others who are using Redhat, Fecore, Suse, Mandrake, simple unzip it and run rpm -ivh *.rpm
Then use KDEPRINT (or something else) and use the z600 driver

BTW, lambroger I did not have any problem to compile gimp-print beta, this does not mean that the printer worked, however.

Sorry for my late reply....
Good luck to all of you

It works in ML 10.1 too

The trick is convert the rpm to tar.gz with rpm2targz