How to get "Epson Printer Utility" to start from Launcher in Ubuntu?

There is "Epson Printer Utility" that shows ink levels and allows to check nozzles and clean printer heads. This utility appeared not long ago and it is very useful, because there is no other way to see ink levels for printers without LED using Linux systems.

The utility can be downloaded from Epson Drivers Site.

After the deb package is installed the utility can be started by

epson-printer-utility

terminal command.

How can I get set it up to be started a normal way from Launcher or a desktop icon?

3 Answers

You need to create a desktop file for it and change some permissions.

1. Create /usr/share/applications/epson-utility.desktop file with this content:

   #!/usr/bin/env xdg-open
   [Desktop Entry]
   Encoding=UTF-8
   Type=Application
   Categories=Application;Printing;
   Name=Epson Printer Utility
   Exec=epson-printer-utility
   Terminal=false
   Icon=/opt/epson-printer-utility/resource/Images/AppIcon.png

2. Give permissions to this file to be run

   sudo chmod +x /usr/share/applications/epson-utility.desktop

3. There are no permissions to read contents of /opt/epson-printer-utility/resource/Images directory for some reason. You need to grant them.

   sudo chmod 755 /opt/epson-printer-utility/resource/Images

Now you will see the utility in your Launcher.

I did alt+F2 and epson-printer-utility and then locked the icon on panel, plain and simple.

You could also try using gnome-panel to create an icon for it. You can install gnome-panel (from the terminal) with:

sudo apt-get install gnome-panel --no-install-recommends

and then start it (again from the terminal) with:

sudo gnome-desktop-item-edit /usr/share/applications/ --create-new

Then enter the name you would like the icon to have, the terminal command to start it, and a file path to a picture for the icon you want.