I am a new user with 58 years of computer and programming experience but new to Linux MATE on a spare ASUS K50i. I have a nice setup of a MATE desktop but now have to get critical hardware to work in order to consider this venture seriously. Without a printer the laptop only becomes useful as an amusement. The MATE version after running all the updates is 18.04. Apparently this is what is ultimately compatible with my somewhat old ASUS K50i.
My Xerox 3215 multi function printer was recognized (as some people said it would be "out of the box" on the Internet) when plugged into a laptop USB port. I even got so far as to respond to the "PRINT TEST PAGE" button in one of the MATE app windows for the printer. I used some keyins in the MATE console that I found in various I'net posts to list out information on the printer and the connection.
The problem comes when the test print started. All I got was a wasteful stream of pages with one top line of garbage characters on each. The print kill button on the printer panel did nothing to stop so I had to flip the power switch and pull the USB cable out to stop the activity.
If anyone may have fixed a problem like this or understands what may be going wrong I would appreciate some advice.
I know some of you will say download the latest driver and install it. That is a bit beyond my immediate state of familiarity with the process at this time. I was counting on the O.S. finding the correct drivers and installing them. Also the Xerox website mentions only Ubuntu 10.04 distribution. I have been having trouble finding a good explanation for what to do once the .tar package is extracted and how to run the driver installation.
Also I would appreciate it if someone could provide a link to instructions or YouTube demo on how to prepare the O.S. for a new printer driver install. How to run a setup file and such. This would ideally include how to clean the O.S. of existing obsolete drivers first, etc. I expect this to be less automated than M.S. "Windows" and mostly command line based.
Thanks for the help. I'll learn this stuff eventually if I decide to stick with Linux. In the early 90's I had a job where I routinely wrote Unix shell scripts so some of this is coming back.