summary: I'd appreciate help installing a driver for my Epson Stylus NX515 inkjet all-in-one onto jaunty boxes.

details:

newbie alert: I have some but not lots experience with linux desktops. (I have lots more experience with cygwin and with CLI access to linux servers.)

I have an Epson Stylus NX515 printer/scanner/copier that works fine under winxp sp3. I have a System76 jaunty laptop

Code:
$ uname -srvmo
Linux 2.6.28-17-generic #58-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 1 21:27:25 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
and my GF has a System76 jaunty UNR netbook

Code:
$ uname -srvmo
Linux 2.6.28-17-generic #58-Ubuntu SMP Tue Dec 1 18:57:07 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
on which I'm trying to install a driver for the NX515, but I'm having problems with the architectures and dependencies. There is an i386 (only) driver and PPD for the NX515 @

http://www.avasys.jp/lx-bin2/linux_e/spc/DL2.do

and instructions @

http://linux.avasys.jp/drivers/pipsl...PD%20files.txt

which advises one to

  1. download the driver package (pipslite_1.4.0-5_i386.deb) and the PPD (Epson-Stylus_NX515-pipslite-en.ppd). The PPD must be saved to /usr/share/cups/model, so I mkdir-ed that dir and downloaded both the PPD and the deb there.
  2. install the driver. I pushd-ed to/usr/share/cups/model and tried

    Code:
    $ dpkg -i pipslite_1.4.0-3_i386.deb
    which failed due to architecture mismatch, so I tried

    Code:
    $ dpkg -i --force-architecture pipslite_1.4.0-3_i386.deb
    which told me

    Code:
    dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of pipslite:
 pipslite depends on libltdl3 (>= 1.5.2-2); however:
 Package libltdl3 is not installed.
    Naively I tried

    Code:
    $ sudo apt-get install libltdl3
    which said

    Code:
    Package libltdl3 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package libltdl3 has no installation candidate
    but also broke the software index per Software Update. Per its advice, I ran

    Code:
    $ sudo apt-get install -f
    which removed package=pipslite. I then searched for "libltdl" in
    synaptic. I found I already had libltdl7 but not libltdl7-dev, so I
    installed the latter, which installed autotools-dev and libtool.
    I then reran

    Code:
    $ sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture pipslite_1.4.0-5_i386.deb
    but got the same error regarding libltdl3.


So I'm wondering:

  1. How to satisfy the Avasys .deb's desire for libltdl3?
  2. Should I try another driver? Epson only provides windows and mac here. Avasys also provides .rpm (which I'm not sure how to use under ubuntu) and source (which I could try to configure, make, make install).
  3. Is there another alternative I should attempt?