How to print “real copies” (without re-transmitting the data) with the page laser printer Epson EPL-7100, with Linux?

If you want to produce larger amount of copies, avoiding the retransmission of data is of course desirable for performance reasons (with this printer 6 pages/min instead of 0,5 pages/min, where the latter value is due to awesome slow transmission).

The printer has two general possibilities for that: setting this via the printer driver, or settng this in the menu on the printer itself. The first approach seems to be impossible at Linux (I have a vague remembrance that it was possible once). The second approach is possible, but not with the default (Laserjet2) printer driver. Instead:

1. Enter the desired number of copies on the printer itself.
2. Switch to the system menu of the printer itself, save the current configuration as “Macro 1” and then load “Macro 1”.
3. Use Gutenprint to print your file to the printer. Then (and then only) the copy settings in the printer get used, while the Laserjet2 driver overwrites them. To use Gutenprint, print from GIMP. The easiest way to print any document in GIMP is to convert it to PDF, open the PDF in GIMP using the printer’s maximum resulution (here 300dpi), and then print it with GIMP.