Got to hand it to HP

Roken · 2012-02-01 14:41:04

I've never been a huge fan of HP printers, my last experience being a long long time ago with one that regularly suffered dried heads and jams. However, I've been in the market for a new printer and scanner recently, and have had cause to set up a couple of HP printers with HPLIP, so whilst I was looking which to get I noticed that the only company that actively stated whether or not their product was supported by Linux was HP. I decided to bite the bullet and buy an HP all in one with ADF and fax, got it home and connected it up with USB, and it worked just fine with HPLIP. I hadn't realised when I bought it that it was wireless, too, so to free up a USB port I decided to see how well the wireless functions worked.

Imagine my surprise when setting it up with HPLIP it did all the hard work for me, and all functions are available wirelessly (I was expecting scan to fail, but no problems whatsoever).

So for once in my life I find myself applauding one of the big players for considering the poor minority. My only criticism would be the complete lack of Linux setup documentation, but then I suspect that they think if we can use Linux, we can work it out without a dummies guide.

Kudos to HP.

Last edited by Roken (2012-02-01 14:41:20)

kokoko3k · 2012-02-01 15:01:17

I own an m1212nf multifunction printer.
print works good, but scanner doesn't, it gives wrong aspect ratio images when used in grayscale plus yellow dots on the picture when scanning from adf.
hp advertise this product as fully supported under linux and my bug report is still open by months...

.:B:. · 2012-02-01 16:00:24

I only buy HP printers. Because they make sure they will run on Linux.

bwat47 · 2012-02-01 20:04:48

I agree. I don't have much experience with HP printers, but I recently got this nice HP wireless printer (officejet pro 8600 I believe). Opened up system-config-printer, the printer's ip address popped right up, selected the driver and it worked perfectly. Easier setup than on my windows machines

toad · 2012-02-10 14:56:45

[SOLVED]

We just got an M1212 nf on the network and hp-setup recognises it, wants to download the binary plugin for the printer driver (and there is network traffic) to work but fails consistently

System is up-to-date and any attempt to find this binary plugin on google have failed so far. http://hplipopensource.com is not very forthcoming with info and I haven't got a clue what to do next.

I've got hplip and hplip-plugin installed.

Any pointers are greatly appreciated...

EDIT:

Run hp-setup -i and got the following:

...
----------------------
| INSTALLING PLUG-IN |
----------------------

Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing HPLIP 3.11.12 Plugin Self Extracting Archive.........................................
  File "./plugin_install.py", line 78
    except ImportError, e:
                      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
error: Python gobject/dbus may be not installed

Done.

I've got both gobject and dbus installed, must google error message...

EDIT:
... and found that I need /usr/bin/python to link to python2.7 rather than python3. Solved

Last edited by toad (2012-02-10 15:13:22)

kokoko3k · 2012-02-10 19:12:43

Hey Toad, could you please take a look here and see if you can reproduce?
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130089
thanks!

pyther · 2012-02-12 04:56:15

This might be true with inkjets, but it is not true with laser printers. Both Samsung and Brother state on their product pages that Linux is supported.

panosk · 2012-03-02 12:31:53

A couple of years ago, I bought an all-in-one HP C6380. Initially, all worked great, wi-fi, scanning, printing. At some point, an update stripped the maximum print resolution from the PPD and it took several months and bug reports in the hplip forums to find a solution. The solution was to manually modify the PPD... A fix never came out and I'm still wondering why not...

Anyway, I could bite that. The major issue came a few months ago, when the printhead simply went bananas and the printer wouldn't work no matter what. I could bite that too if I had used the printer a lot but actually the printer had been used rarely. After some research, I saw many complains for HP's mid-range printers not being well-made and breaking easily. Now I need a new MFP and although I would really love HP's Linux compatibility I'm very reluctant.

Just my 2 cents.

Misfit138 · 2012-03-03 00:17:52

Nothing but good things to report about HP printers as well as hplip.

panosk · 2012-03-03 11:21:08

Small update, for what is worth. I just bought the Epson Stylus Photo PX730WD/Artisan 730 and I'm impressed. Very good build quality, flawless setup, full Linux compatibility both for printing and scanning (both with the iScan utility and with Sane) with the packages from Aur, all wireless. I guess Epson has followed HP's Linux paradigm and that's only good for all us Linux users :-).

Cheers.

ZekeSulastin · 2012-03-06 02:07:06

pyther wrote:

Both Samsung and Brother state on their product pages that Linux is supported.

I second this. I have a Brother laser and color inkjet hanging off my Linux file server, and they both work beautifully both locally and over the network via both CUPS and Samba.

zenlord · 2012-03-08 15:44:16

ZekeSulastin wrote:

pyther wrote:
Both Samsung and Brother state on their product pages that Linux is supported.
I second this. I have a Brother laser and color inkjet hanging off my Linux file server, and they both work beautifully both locally and over the network via both CUPS and Samba.

Third. Both my office and my wife's run solely on Brother printers and multifunctionals. If only libreoffice printing wouldn't be broken (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43932), I would be one happy camper...

Zl.

cfr · 2012-03-20 23:47:34

My Dell was advertised as supporting Linux and Dell provide drivers which work just fine. It also seems to work well without installing their drivers. (Maybe fewer options but still works well.)

My experience with HPs has been mixed. For Laser printers, the 2000 series printers were a nightmare. In the end, the IT department found me an older 1000 series printer and that works pretty well but is excruciatingly slow if there is the smallest hint of a graphic or diagram on the page. (I mostly print text so this isn't usually an issue.) The 3000 series printers I've tried have all worked both very well and very easily. For these, the printers are auto-detected and auto-configured. So I think it depends on which printers...

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-01 14:41:04

Got to hand it to HP

#2 2012-02-01 15:01:17

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#3 2012-02-01 16:00:24

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#4 2012-02-01 20:04:48

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#5 2012-02-10 14:56:45

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#6 2012-02-10 19:12:43

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#7 2012-02-12 04:56:15

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#8 2012-03-02 12:31:53

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#9 2012-03-03 00:17:52

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#10 2012-03-03 11:21:08

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#11 2012-03-06 02:07:06

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#12 2012-03-08 15:44:16

Re: Got to hand it to HP

#13 2012-03-20 23:47:34

Re: Got to hand it to HP

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