Not many moons ago I installed Mandrake 7.1
all went well (eventually) and I am having fun with KDE and Gnome
I even managed to get Star Office working - But
my blinkin Epson Stylus 480 won't print a thing.

According to Mandrake support no driver had been written for this printer yet - does anyone know of a URL where
I can check periodically if a driver has been written yet
and or does anyone know how I can get the printer to work
from my Linux partition?

You may need to get some better CUPS.

That was a joke BTW. (betterquit while I'm ahead!)

Honestly, you may need the newest version of CUPS http://www.cups.org which is the Common Unix Printing System. It supplies driver files for almost all printers around, and is quite good I think.

If not check with epson if they have produced their own drivers for Linux.

Thanks for that I tried the Epson Web site to no avail -
I may give CUPS a try but if installing a different / better CUPS is difficult I may just do one of:
Buy a better printer (something I'm thinking of anyway)
Upgrade Mandrake to 7.2 and see if that helps
Change my distro altogether
Scrap Linux altogether

Mandrake 7.2 does have an updated version of CUPS so that may work for two of your suggestions.

You got Star office working? how?
I have Mandrake 7.0. I can find the Star Office files in the KDE explorer thing, but can't figure out how to run it. It wouldn't install properly when I tried to use the command line instructions, so i used the Kpackage - which is to say, I clicked on the CDicon on the desktop, then clicked on the star office file...it looks like I installed a ton of stuff [CD 3 in my distro] but I can't even find the other stuff...could you tell me where to look [none of the KDE desktop find apps seemed to find anything, plus I can't remember the names of most of the things, argh.]
Anyway - help with Star office alone would be appreciated. I can only learn linux if I use it for something besides playing asteroids!
jwhiz

I have 2 480s, a 480 sxu (usb) and an sx (parallel). Both work flawlessly under Mandrake 9.1 and did under 9.0

Edit - I just realised this thread is 2 years old.......strange.

I would suggest you get Mandrake 9.1 and install it. It has nearly all the Epson printers in it, and if you pick yours and complete the install you should be up and running. I've been theu all the MNK versions from 7 ..8..9..and 9 is great! Installed all my periphs perfectly w/o any problems.
Don't give up on Linux....it ain't easy, but it's worth it in the long run.

You don't have to upgrade to Mandrake 9 or even Mandrake 9.1 . You can either remove CUPS, install a latest version of CUPS, or download the drivers for your from ESP Print Pro.