Liam on Linux

Public service announcement here, following an epic battle this evening.

Ubuntu, and thus Mint, print via CUPS, and include HP's modifications to this to support HP's printers - a subsystem called HPLIP. The snag is, the version they include in Mint 7 (based on Ubuntu 9.04) is 3.9.2 - and if you want to connect a current-model HP printer such as a Deskjet D2660 (one of the last pure-printer-only inkjets on the market, AFAICS) or a F2480 (a decent, inexpensive little all-in-one multifunction type device), these need a newer version of HPLIP.

HP provide a downloadable installer for v3.9.10 of this here:
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/install/index.html

The snag is, it doesn't work on Mint 7. It has a whole pile of dependencies and it can't resolve them on its own. (Maybe because Mint 7 isn't a supported distro - I don't know.) I've not yet tried Mint 8 (which only came out today) or Ubuntu, but I suspect there will be similar problems on Ubuntu 9.04 at least.

But I've found a way to do it.

Pre-installing this little lot of packages allows the installer to at least run through to completion:

ubuntu-dev-tools
python-all-dev
libcups2-dev
libusb-1.0-0
libusbdev
libtool
libcupsimage2-dev

However, the HP installer still complains that a load of optional pieces are missing, so you get no printer GUI, no scanning and so on.

This additional pile fixes that:

python-qt4-common
python-qt4-dbus
python-reportlab
xsane
libsane-dev

Install all of them - you could just "apt-get install" the whole list, separated by spaces, that should do it - and HPLIP 3.8.10 installs fine.

It still doesn't print, though. To get that working, one last step is needed. As root or using "sudo", you need to go to the directory

/usr/lib/cups/filter

and make a symlink to create a standin for a missing file:
ln -s foomatic-rip foomatic-rip-hplip

Do this, reboot, plug in your new HP, and it should Just Work™.

Hope that Google finds this and it helps someone... :¬)