Hi all! Well my friend is moving house and he gave me printer lexmark 2500 series (x2500) for free..nice! But my problem come-up after I unpack printer from box and connected to my loved linuxmint machine. I find out there is no linux driver for this printer. Even on Lexmark website no luck.. (lexmark sucks! ..sometimes) so how did I make lexmark x2500 working on linuxmint 9?

1. On the Lexmark website under Drivers & Downloads find the X2600 all-in-one printer and click on Unix/Linux. Download the following driver file (approx 30MB) to your home folder:
lexmark-inkjet-08-driver-1.0-1.i386.deb.sh.zip

2. Don't connect the printer yet. Right-click on the downloaded file and choose "Extract All...". then click OK to unzip it in your home folder.

3.You will now also have the same file but unzipped so it ends in sh. If you can't get the installer to run by clicking the icon with right-click  > Properties > Permissions > click on Allow executing file as program. Note there's command for this aswel but for this case we can ''go my way'' anyway eh!

4. Now follow the instructions on screen. When you get to the point where it asks you to connect the printer, do so. However, you will find it won't be recognised (because it's not a 2600 series or Z2300 series printer). Exit by clicking the close button on the window and then clicking "Yes".

5. Now we must edit three text files to change the product i/d (PID) from 011d (or 0x011d), which is the PID for the X2600 series, to 010b (or 0x010b) which is the PID for the Lexmark X2550. The following commands in a terminal will open each of the relevant files in a text editor:

sudo gedit /usr/lexinkjet/lxk08/etc/lxdn.conf
sudo gedit /usr/lexinkjet/lxk08/etc/99-lexmark-2600-series.rules
sudo gedit /usr/lexinkjet/lxk08/etc/Lexmarklxdn.conf

In each case change 011d wherever it appears to 010b (or 011D to 010B if it was in capitals), save and exit!

6. Now add the printer using the CUPS interface.

Reconnect printer and in the first page ''Choose driver''  click on ''select printer from database'' then find in scroll menu ''Lexmark'' and press Forward. On next window under Models click on ''2600'' then under Drivers click on ''Lexmark 2600 Series, 1.0 [en] (recommended)'' and press forward.On next window you need to fill up box called Location. There you can just type ''lexmarkusbbackend#1'' as one word.

7. Finally click on "Print Test Page" and keep your fingers crossed :) It works hm? Well done! Press apply and close.

The scanner works as well, although only from the computer not from the scanner button on the printer eh! There is also a Lexmark inkjet program to monitor ink levels and align the cartridges (type lexijtools in a terminal), but I could not get this to work - probably it doesn't recognise different cartridges in the X2550. On X2500 printer alignment sheet can be printed by holding the scan button for 3 seconds, then place it on the scanner glass and press the button again.

Ps.: happy hacking :)

kip