The name of this repository is Epson Inkjet Printer Driver 2 (ESC/P-R), in short escpr2.
For the owners of certain Epson printers the open source Printer Driver 2 (ESC/P-R) for Linux or escpr2 will enable printing with CUPS (Common Unix Printing System). While the net-print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr package is in the official Gentoo portage tree, net-print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2 is not.
A complete list of supported printer series is in the ./ppd directory of the source file, among them e.g. Epson WorkForce and EcoTank series printers. For your convenience a list of PPDs, SUPPORTED-PRINTERS, is compiled from the current escpr2-version.
The ebuild will download the files directly from the Seiko Epson Corporation. Because Epson often removes old versions upon release of a new one, older ebuilds likely won't work unless you already obtained the required files and have them available in your distfiles directory.
Please note that Epson releases the driver under the LGPL-2.1 and an EULA, which is a limited license for personal and internal business use!
The quality of this repository is purely experimental! You use it at your own risk! I don't do a lot of testing other than installing the source package myself and printing with it on an EcoTank series printer. Specifically this means that, currently, the binary package is not tested, nor is the escprlib useflag. Also, since I'm not a developer, should newer versions require more ebuild work, a longer delay is to be expected.
The full history can be found in Gentoo Bug #662364. In short: Because an ebuild for net-print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2 was missing in the tree, an existing but too old ebuild already written by Mike Gilbert (floppym) was used and updated.
Please read the Gentoo Wiki ebuild repository page before you proceed.
This is the prefered method.
eselect repository enable escpr2
Running emerge --sync escpr2 will sync only this repository. To remove it, simply use disable in the above command.
This is the manual method. Just copy escpr2.conf to /etc/portage/repos.conf/ and modify it for your configuration, e.g. using your default editor:
wget https://gitlab.com/at.gentoo.repo/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2/-/raw/master/escpr2.conf -O /etc/portage/repos.conf/escpr2.conf
$EDITOR /etc/portage/repos.conf/escpr2.conf
Especially the location field must be set correctly, but disabling auto-sync could also be an interesting option for those who don't want to get regular updates. Since a lot of updates only add new printer models, this could be a preferred option. Refer to NEWS for version update information regarding bug fixes.
The EPSON-EULA must be an accepted license. After reading it you may add it to your make.conf. Please consult the Gentoo Wiki page on make.conf for more information on how to do that.
There are two packages available: the source tarball and the binary package. The source and binary files originate from Epson directly.
This is the preferred ebuild. It downloads the publicly available sources from Epson.
emerge -a net-print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2
The binary package and the source ebuild cannot be installed at the same time. Also, the binary ebuild requires ACCEPT_KEYWORDS to contain ~amd64 (in legacy version 1.1.62 there's also a binary package for ~x86). Use it only if you have problems with the source package.
echo "net-print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2-bin ~amd64" >> /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords
emerge -a net-print/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2-bin
Refer to the README file in /usr/share/doc and the online manual. In short: Add the printer to your CUPS configuration. There are mupltiple ways to do this, one of which is to navigate to http://localhost:631/. When adding a new printer, select model "EPSON-ESC/P-R Printer Driver for Linux" and the correct printer series should be available for selection.
Only bugs (and enhancements or suggestions) concerning the ebuilds should be reported, Gentoo Bug #662364. Problems with the driver must be reported upstream, from ./AUTHORS in the source tarball: "Seiko Epson Corporation <[email protected]>".
- https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Printing
- https://bugs.gentoo.org/662364
- https://download.ebz.epson.net/dsc/search/01/search/?OSC=LX
- https://support.epson.net/linux/Printer/LSB_distribution_pages/en/escpr2.php
- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CUPS/Printer-specific_problems#Epson
- https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/epson-inkjet-printer-escpr2/