Today I helped someone who was suffering from an annoying problem when trying to print documents onto an EPSON Workforce printer from Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon Edition (64-bit). After starting up the computer, the first attempt to print a document onto the printer would work, but for some reason there would be an unreasonably long delay before the document actually appeared. After the first document was eventually printed, the printer would then claim that the print job was stuck in the queue, and subsequent attempts to print anything would silently fail.
Linux has a built-in printing system called CUPS (the Common UNIX Printing System), which can be accessed using a web browser by going to the address ‘localhost:631’. When I looked at CUPS, it was possible to examine the printer queues, and there were no jobs stuck in any of them, so the message saying that there was something stuck in the EPSON Workforce printer queue was nonsense.
At the same time there was another problem, as multiple printers with similar names were apparently available, rather than just one printer called something like ‘EPSON Workforce’. It was difficult to know which one to use when trying to print a document, but they all seemed to exhibit the same ‘only working once’ behaviour. In addition, whenever I tried to delete the printer that had a very long serial number at the end of its name, Linux Mint instantly recreated it, so that particular printer was effectively impossible to remove from the system.
The ‘instantly returning printer’ trouble seemed to be caused by Linux’s new ‘driverless printers’ mechanism, whereby system administrators no longer had to install driver software for new printers because the system did this for itself automatically. However, after doing a little research on the Internet, I discovered that there was a way of stopping this from happening. The way to prevent the system from automatically detecting and installing printers was to remove the ‘cups-browsed’ package.
Linux Mint 20 also had a package called ‘ippusbxd’ that could stop printers from working properly, so I thought it would probably be a good idea to get rid of that as well. The way to remove the ‘cups-browsed’ package from the system was to open a terminal window, type ‘sudo apt purge cups-browsed’, then type in the administrator password when requested. Similarly, the way to remove the ‘ippusbxd’ package from the system was to open a terminal window, type ‘sudo apt purge ippusbxd’, then type in the administrator password when requested.
After getting rid of the unwanted packages, the next step was to visit the Epson website and download the ‘amd64.deb’ files containing the printer and scanner drivers (the printer part of any multi-function device is actually separate from the scanner part, even though both parts are physically located within the same plastic shell). I then installed the printer and scanner drivers manually, after which both printing and scanning worked properly. This just goes to show that even though Linux is superior to Windows in just about every conceivable way, it can still suffer from occasional problems.