Slow Printing on Linux?

sciguy125 asks: "I switched to Linux a few months ago and the biggest problem that I've had is with my printer. I've got a Canon S520 and Red Hat 9. It prints painfully slow. If I want to print word documents that are more than 5 pages, it's faster to reboot into Windows and print from there. I've scoured the Internet and found that many people are having this problem, but nobody has a satisfactory solution. The most common suggestion is to get a faster computer, thinking that GhostScript is running slow. I'm fairly sure that isn't my problem because the processor is only at about half load when printing. I'm not exactly sure how wide spread this problem is, but I do know that there is at least a decent sized handful of people struggling with it. At first, I was considering dropping Linux because this printing problem is a serious issue with me, but now I just leave a good chunk of my printing until after 2am." Has anyone run into the problem before? What could make a print job spool at unusually slow rates to the printer?

Comments

Bandwidth perhaps?

[dtfinch]

If your driver is pretty generic, it may just be sending a raw bitmap to the printer, rather than a compressed or vector image. Whereas the windows driver would have been written specifically for that printer taking advantage of all its features. If you have it connected to a parallel port, try USB since that's much faster. Also try printing at a lower DPI. And try different encoding options if they're offered.

Performance options

[Door-opening Fascist]

If you're using a printer hooked up to a parallel port, do you have an interrupt enabled on that port? Also, make sure that you have a DMA channel setup for it. IIRC, you can pass these options in with the parport module.

Possible USB issue?

[Kevin Burtch]

I ran into this some time back... exactly as you describe - painfully slow printing with little CPU impact.

After some searching I found a hint that it might be related to my USB driver.

Try switching from uhci to usb-uhci (or vise-versa) and see if that makes a difference.

If they're built into your kernel, you'll have to configure them as modules both and rebuild it.

My disposable toy-printer (Lexmark Z35) now works great _and_fast_ in Linux.

Printer install walkthrough, screen by screen

[leonbrooks]

1. Menu: K -> System -> Configuration -> Configure Your Computer.
   
2. Type root password.
   
3. Hardware -> Printers. (Printer thingy starts; if CUPS had not been installed, I would have been prompted to insert the first install CD and CUPS plus all dependencies installed from it)
   
4. Add Printer.
   
5. Next.
   
6. (Autodetects Epson Stylus C41) Next.
   
7. Next.
   
8. Yes (I want to set this printer as the default printer), Next.
   
9. (Leave "Standard test page" selected, other options are "Photo test page" and "Do not print any test page") Next.
   
10. Finish. At this point, the printer is hammering out a test page.
    
11. Close printer thingy.
    
12. Close Mandrake Control Center.

Works just as well for networked printers and printers attached to MS-Windows boxes (might need a username/password for an MS-Window box set up to require that), other CUPS printers are 100% automatic unless you tell CUPS not to.