OneAndOneIs2

So following a hideous Windows screwup, I was asked to install Linux on Tina's mother's laptop. Didn't need to do much - basic internet and document handling. No problem.

So I burned the latest Ubuntu and installed it. Had the typical mild frustration of installing the Wifi card (I know the hardware manufacturers are trying to save a few pennies by having the driver load the firmware onto the card, but seriously? Is flash memory really THAT expensive these days? Fscking cheapskates) and that was pretty much it done. I enabled Compiz just for a laugh and was surprised that the clapped-out old machine was capable of running it flawlessly; desktop-cube, wobbly-windows and all.

I handed it over last weekend and all was well until she came to try printing something. Which didn't work.

It was a Dell 720 printer. So the first thing I did was work out what Dell had rebadged, which was a Lexmark Z600. Which Ubuntu has no driver for. So it had to be installed manually.

Lexmark, to be fair, does actually supply a Linux driver. Good on them. But it's RPM only. And there were all kinds of hiccups along the way, so I thought I'd just make a note of everything I had to do to get a Dell 720 to work on the latest version of Ubuntu:

Go to Lexmark's website & download the RPM & extract the file:
tar -zxvf CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz

Because the sh script is broken, get the binary manually:
tail -n +143 z600cups-1.0-1.gz.sh > install.tar.gz

Extract the install file:
tar -xvzf install.tar.gz

Convert the files from RPM to DEB:
alien z600cups-1.0-1.i386.rpm
alien z600llpddk-2.0-1.i386.rpm

Install the DEB files:
sudo dpkg -i z600cups-1.0-1.i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i z600llpddk-2.0-1.i386.deb

Update the printer backend
sudo ldconfig

Unzip the PPD
cd /usr/share/cups/model
sudo gunzip Lexmark-Z600-lxz600cj-cups.ppd.gz

Restart CUPS
sudo /etc/rc2.d/S50cups restart

Check that the printer backend is broken
cd /usr/lib/cups/backend
./z600

Mount the USB filesystem
To /etc/fstab, add:
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=14,devmode=0660 0 0
sudo mount usbfs

Check that the printer backend is STILL broken
cd /usr/lib/cups/backend
./z600

When you get an error because the current Ubuntu doesn't have libstdc++5 available
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/g/gcc-3.3/libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libstdc++5_3.3.6-17ubuntu1_i386.deb

Check that the printer backend is no longer broken
cd /usr/lib/cups/backend
./z600

And at this point, you should be able to plug in the printer and select the Lexmark Z600 driver from the list of options. And then it'll work flawlessly.

Yay!

And they say it's not easy to install printers under Linux...