try
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport

Epson printers are usually just plug-and-go in Ubuntu so did you get
the 'Printer Installed' message a few seconds after you plugged it in,
and which version of Ubuntu are you using ?

The plug-and-go did work. I am using ver 10.10.
It seems as if the drivers are corrupt - it does print out garbage
eventually. I have reinstalled the printer and the problem is not fixed.

Ubuntu 10.10 is still a beta version, i.e. not ready for full release
yet ( so I do question that it's promoted so highly on the Ubuntu site
with the stable release of 10.04LTS demoted to the secondary 'Download'
button on the right !).

When the full version becomes available on 10th October you may find
that updating to that is all you need to do. To test this, create an
Ubuntu 10.04 Live CD and boot the system with that and see if your
printer works correctly ( yes it will work from the CD, albeit a
little slower ). If it still doesn't work then try to install it on a
Windows system and see if it fails to print - it's possible you have a
faulty printer, it happens !!

FWIW I've no intention of upgrading 10.04 as it's a LTS one ( Long
Term Support ) that will continue to get updates for 3 years. This
relieves the pressure of having to upgrade every 6 months on my
working system, but I'll probably install the newer ones in Virtual
Box to see what changes are being made - it'll take a major one to
make me switch and join the 6 monthly upgrade merry-go-round again

You make a good point about 10.10. Lucid (10.04) actually has a longer shelf
life that Maverick. However, it is a tradeoff as you are stuck in time
(April, 2010) for 3 years. One possible solution for users is to enable
backports. This will keep the stability of 10.04, but enable you to get
upgrades of major packages such as OpenOffice. Without that you will still
be using what you have 2 1/2 years from now. I don't know about you, but
that prospect does not appeal to me. That is a long time in the computer
world.

Know what you mean but for a system that's in use daily the stability
of the OS is more important to me than the extra features. I began my
Ubuntu life with 9.04 and upgraded to 9.10 then to 10.04 but found
that the system didn't work quite as well as it should so 'bit the
bullet' and clean installed 10.04 ( going for 64bit in the process ).
It was a good move and more than happy with the stability of my Lucid
64bit
I will keep up with the new versions in Virtual Box as and when they
come out and possibly investigate porting over some things to Lucid
but it would take a major change to get me back into regular upgrade
and possible clean install every now and again !!

R> I don't know about you, but that prospect does not appeal to me.
R> That is a long time in the computer world.

And that is exactly why Ubuntu has LTS releases. It is a good plan for
people like you. I am already using Maverick and while i like it better it
actually is no faster and GNOME is in for big changes that I am sure that
many users will not like. The argument over GNOME 3 will be a lot like KDE
users experienced with KDE 3.4 vs 4. Now most KDE users have converted, but
GNOME users may take even more time to get used to GNOME as it is very
different. So far, Maverick is not any different as GNOME 3 will make its
debut in Natty.

You might want to consider enabling the backports, though. It involves just
cutting and pasting one line into your sources list.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports

my wife has a sx115 and printer perfect but scanner doesnt work we also have a
dx440 epson and that doesnt work so I bought a samsung laser and got a hp
scanner off a recycle website.

I now have a sx215 that works with the drivers of a sx115.
Have not tried the scanner yet - maybe the sx215 drivers work there :).
Surely it uses the sane drivers?

It sounds like the wrong driver as opposed to corrupt driver. Not all
printers will work in Linux, just as not all printers will work in all
versions of Windows. When my friends upgraded to Vista their HP laser became
a doorstop. HP said that there were no Vista drivers for that printer and
they had no plans to make them. With Linux, drivers are reverse engineered
except in cases where OEMs have the foresight to support Linux. A few have
even open sourced their drivers, but for the most part it is still
proprietary meaning that Linux developers cannot have access to the code or
make changes.

The kernel in 10.10 is quite recent so it won't likely get much better.
Check out:
http://linuxhcl.org/
http://hardware4linux.info/manufacturers/

I am convinced it is now a wrong driver.
The epson site recognises my system as linux and offers no linux
drivers. M$ software and drivers is there.
I have left a note for the Epson people to this effect.

I have tried ubuntu 9.04 9.10 and 10.04 without success,

The reason there's no driver for download on the Epson site is that
Ubuntu supports them natively - they should be just plug and go !

I'd try installing this printer on a Windows system - suspect you'll
find it doesn't work on that either ... i.e. it's a faulty printer.

I have found that running Administration/Printing, then clicking on "add" always
does the job for me -- even with a network printer.