Arch Linux

marco

Member

Registered: 2004-06-04

Posts: 18

Printing very slow

Hi there

I just bought a printer, the Brother HL-5140. An USB printer.
I installed it using cups.

Now: the printing is very slow, compared to a print from a windows machine (a small Picture 7x5cm takes 5 minutes). Earlier i had installed other printers on linux with the same effect.
I must say, I do not have the right printer driver (ppd) for my printer. The printer can emulate PCL6, and that's what i'm using now. My driver is the "HP Color Laserjet Series PCL 6 CUPS v1.1" .

So the question: is it normal, that printing is slower on linux than on windows, or is it because of the driver/emulation? But if it is the emulation, why occured the problem with other printers as well?

thanks for any help

          marco

tpowa

Developer

From: Lauingen , Germany

Registered: 2004-04-05

Posts: 2,322

Re: Printing very slow

play aroung with other drivers
look at foomatic packages, gimp-print, hpij
that can help :-)

dp

Member

From: Zürich, Switzerland

Registered: 2003-05-27

Posts: 3,378

Website

Re: Printing very slow

the translation into PS takes CPU, and in the worst case, while printing, you do this:

app-format(e.g. TIFF)->PS->PCL->Printer

what costs 2 transformations

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The impossible missions are the only ones which succeed.

mr_ed

Member

From: Ottawa, ON, Canada

Registered: 2004-04-13

Posts: 72

Re: Printing very slow

Normally I would say to look at http://www.linuxprinting.org, but your printer's not listed.

slyski

Member

From: Cheese Head Land

Registered: 2004-01-11

Posts: 60

Re: Printing very slow

i have to say that printing and setting up printers on linux distro's has been nothing but a pain in the butt. 

i have two canon's (S400 and  a S630) that print slower than i work, and that's pretty damn slow  .

the S630 will only work partially at best and the S400, well let's just say i can go out to play for awhile.

to print to full capacity and for critical stuff i have to go back into windows, blah

i recently swapped out the S400 for a used Epson 480SXU. the printer is very compatible with linux and prints just ok speed wise and also does photo's pretty well.

the one distro that seems to have a handle on printers to some extent is Mandrake. i may try out 10.0 in the future just to see if  they got some more printers working.

i am also going to try out turboprint:
http://www.turboprint.de/english.html
i see your printer listed as well as my canons.
even though this is pay for it stuff i don't think it's so much as to break the bank as long as it works.

i'll keep you posted,
slyski

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Joey: If a cow passes away from natural causes can I eat it.
Pheobe: Not if I get there first.