Hello, I’m trying to save an old printing station from Windows 10 going EoL in the next few months, so the idea was installing Linux on the machine running it. Before doing that, I wanted to make sure that everything was working fine, but I’m having troubles testing with my laptop with Fedora 41 KDE installed.
When I plug in the printer, it’s detected correctly:
lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0026 Intel Corp. AX201 Bluetooth
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05ca:040f Ricoh Co., Ltd Aficio MP 1600L
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
The system prompts me that it can’t find a driver automatically, so it redirects me to a search utility. If I search for the driver, I can see one for this specific model: Ricoh Aficio MP 1600 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.3.4
The configuration completes without errors, but if I try to print anything, the printer simply doesn’t react (no issues with the old Win10 PC). All print jobs are instantly marked as completed.
From another forum I found this command to retrieve CUPS information:
sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb
DEBUG: Loading USB quirks from "/usr/share/cups/usb".
DEBUG: Loaded 218 quirks.
DEBUG: list_devices
DEBUG: libusb_get_device_list=4
DEBUG2: iSerialNumber="01A130652568K"
DEBUG2: Printer found with device ID: MFG:RICOH;CMD:GDI;MDL:Aficio MP 1600L;CLS:PRINTER; Device URI: usb://RICOH/Aficio%20MP%201600L?serial=01A130652568K&interface=1
direct usb://RICOH/Aficio%20MP%201600L?serial=01A130652568K&interface=1 "RICOH Aficio MP 1600L" "RICOH Aficio MP 1600L" "MFG:RICOH;CMD:GDI;MDL:Aficio MP 1600L;CLS:PRINTER;" ""
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!
I tried downloading the PPD files from Foomatic DB as you suggested, but the behavior seems to be the same regardless of the PPD used (no reaction from printer, print status is “completed”).
The procedure I used was editing printer from settings, changing the PPD, applying, unplugging printer and plugging it back in.
Is there anything else I can check in order to further analyze this issue?
Hi, after checking what you told me, I had to install the packages you suggested, as they weren’t present by default on my Fedora laptop.
I removed the Printer and restarted the PC, but when I plugged it back in, it still didn’t recognize it automatically. I was able to find the drivers provided by Foomatic this time, but the printer still doesn’t work with those.
The only strange thing I can notice is that the printer is listed as Ricoh Aficio MP 1600L, but I’m not sure why since the tag on it only says 1600.
It basically says: “No drivers installed. No compatible driver found.”
As you can see below, a printer driver with the same model is installed:
Hardware ID: USBPRINT\RICOHAficio_MP_1600LDD51 - RICOHAficio_MP_1600LDD51
Driver Version: 1.0.60.0
Driver Date: 26/04/2013
By searching on the web for a bit, the Windows driver seems to be coming from here (direct download). is there any way to make this work under Linux?
Does the printer have a setting of setting postscript mode? For example, the driver Ricoh-Aficio_MP_1600_PS.ppd expects the printer to be in postscript mode.
