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Thread: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

  1. #1
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    Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    I've been fighting with this for a couple of days now.

    I have an Epson Stylus NX-330 that worked perfectly well with my windows machine.

    the windows machine is a brick right now.

    I bought an acer netbook a couple of months ago, tore windows 8 off it and installed 12.10 as the only operating system. My intent was simply to have a light, portable machine that I could take with me and write on. it's heavier than a transformer tablet but it was also half the price. I've added LXDE because ... well, it's poky. It's slow. I don't think my netbook can handle 12.10. If I could drop back to say 10 point something I think it would perform nicely. But I'm willing to put up with slow right now because my windows machine is a BRICK and I can't print anything, and I need to be able to print things for my work.

    I've searched around looking for solutions. I run into a few barriers with this. They explain things at a level higher than my understanding, so the help isn't helping me because I don't have a firm grasp on the language.

    so. Epson Stylus NX-330 Small in one? no usb connection. it is wireless only.

    also. Acer A-100 netbook? no DVD or CD capability whatsoever. I used a cd to load the drivers on my windows machine; I cannot use that solution with my netbook.

    I've seen this already. epson's page for printer drivers

    I've gone to that page. I dont understand anything there. there's no explanation for anything. there are links for a ESC/P Driver (full feature), a ESC/P-R Driver (generic driver), a core package&data package, and a network plugin package. the first two are printer drivers; the second two are scanner drivers.

    let's use just the ESC/P-R Driver (generic driver) as an example for now. I click the link that says "download" and it takes me here:

    an incredibly long lists of all the printers these drivers support. I have no faith that this is true.

    because I am a lazy person I just searched for NX330, and sure enough, it's in that huge list. I accept the agreement.

    I then see


    File name File size
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr-1.2.2-1lsb3.2.i486.rpm 1.43 MB
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr_1.2.2-1lsb3.2_i386.deb 1.73 MB
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr-1.2.2-1lsb3.2.x86_64.rpm 1.43 MB
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr_1.2.2-1lsb3.2_amd64.deb 1.73 MB
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr-1.2.2-1lsb3.2.src.rpm 1.38 MB
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr-1.2.2-1lsb3.2.tar.gz 1.45 MB

    and I suppose i'm to download all of those, so I do.

    THEN WHAT? they don't do anything! I click them, they do nothing. obviously i'm missing something that it's already assumed that I know, but I DON'T. and there's no easy way to find it out. I've been trying.

    I've had an account here for years. I'm only on 25 posts. I hven't been using linux solidly in all that time, because every time i run into a problem like this I stop using linux and stick to what I know how to deal with. Windows may be frustrating but I've been using IBM machines since before windows was even a thing, so when something goes wrong I can often figure out how to even start looking for a solution just because my computer experience is saturated through years of exposure. but linux is just not that easy to learn, and so I've never spent a lot of time with it.

    It's because I don't even have the most basic understanding, and while I know that I don't know, i don't know how to start knowing. I know that this is totally basic, and I'm stupid for not knowing it, but I don't know it, and I haven't been able to find a way to learn it.
    Last edited by Athena's Owl; January 8th, 2013 at 01:25 AM. Reason: wow sentence fail

  2. #2
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    All right. I have managed to install the .deb packages; that wound up being a simple matter of clicking on them twice *quickly* which is difficult on a netbook.

    the .rpm files? still no luck figuring out how to open those. I checked to see if simply installing the .deb files would solve my problem but my printer is still not detected.

    so I'm guessing I have to figure out how to install the .rpm files? I'm trying to look that up but I still haven't found a site that explains how without assuming a knowledge of linux language, which I still don't have.

    ETA: I found this page which got me to install Alien and dpkg and dephelper, so I managed that

    but the next step was to use alien to open a specific package name, which I painstakingly copied from the filename. but command line came back saying that the package didn't exist. what? am I doing wrong? is it like DOS where you have to "be" in the correct directory in order for alien to find the package? I assumed that wasn't so because I've merrily obeyed command line instructions just straight from opening a terminal, so I don't know what went wrong here.

    ETA2: I just typed "Alien" in a terminal and it wants the switch -d and the command also has to be at root, so I tried

    sudo alien -d epson-inkjet-printer-201105w-1.0.0-1lsb3.2.i486.rpm

    and it still tells me File Not Found, even though I'm staring right at the file, and I copied the file name and pasted the exact file name into the command, so I still don't know what I could possibly be doing wrong. Seriously need help here.
    Last edited by Athena's Owl; January 8th, 2013 at 08:30 PM. Reason: Updated what I've tried so far

  3. #3
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    Ubuntu 12.10, did you install 64 bit or 32 bit?

  4. #4
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    OMG THANK YOU FOR REPLYING TO ME

    i installed 64-bit.

  5. #5
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    This is the package that you should install
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr_1.2.2-1lsb3.2_amd64.deb 1.73 MB

  6. #6
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    and you should remove this package
    epson-inkjet-printer-escpr_1.2.2-1lsb3.2_i386.deb

    sudo dpkg -r epson-inkjet-printer-escpr_1.2.2-1lsb3.2_i386.deb

  7. #7
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    \tried that, and got

    dpkg: error: you must specify packages by their own names, not by quoting the names of the files they come in

    for my trouble

    and I can't seem to get the software center to load the package so i can uninstall it from there no matter how I try and i've rebooted twice

    is that the reason why the computer can't see my printer?

  8. #8
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    "that wound up being a simple matter of clicking on them twice *quickly* which is difficult on a netbook."

    Select it then press Enter...

    Anyway, you should only install the Ubuntu package, not the Fedora/Red Hat/Debian packges.

    Also, Xubuntu 12.10 runs pretty well on a slow netbook (Atom N455, 1GB RAM), so you're doing it wrong.

  9. #9
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    Is your printer connected via usb cable?

  10. #10
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    Re: Epson stylus wireless printer and a netbook = no hair

    Quote Originally Posted by Ringi View Post
    Is your printer connected via usb cable?
    No, and what's more, it's not possible to do so. the printer doesn't have so much as a port to connect such a cable; it's wireless only.

    i'm not having any luck attempting to remove the x86 packages. when I was trying to get all those packages installed, the software center would pop up to tell me that a given package was already installed, and gave an option to remove it, but now that I want that back it won't even completely load. I've left it alone for seven minutes, and surely it couldn't take that long to do? but 12.10 is very slow and congested in general, which is why I usually do things in LXDE - it's a lot faster.

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