Printing Rant! Why is this so hard? - eviltoast

Debian 12. HP Laserjet Professional P1606dn

If it prints at all, it prints the top inch of the test page or just random binary. I have tried the recommended driver, the driverless driver, the Generic PCL 4/5 driver, the Generic PCL 6 driver. And probably others I am not remembering.

I am trying to print over Ethernet, but I am about to drag the printer over near my desk and print via USB.

Fortunately, I don’t have actual critical printing to do right now and I am only setting up a printer after installing Debian 12. BTW this means it is a fresh install of Debian 12 too.

I have been helpdesk support at a data center. I would not consider myself a dummy, but this is getting ridiculous. A task that should have taken all of 10 minutes has taken over 2 hours so far.

How are we ever going to get “The Year of Linux on the Desktop” if simple printing is and continues to be such a pain?

  • WasPentalive@lemmy.oneOP
    4·
    1 year ago

    That was worse - the test page failed with “filter failed”, went back to “Generic PCL Laser Printer”, and was able to print a full Debian test page again.

    • qwesx@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Have you installed the plugin within hplip, or rather, the hplip-GUI program? Have you removed the old printer from CUPS before trying?

      • WasPentalive@lemmy.oneOP
        1·
        1 year ago

        I don’t really understand the CUPS web interface at localhost:[cups port] but I am removing the printer from the control panel and ensuring it disappeared over a reboot. I installed the hplip package using apt. I don’t know if it brought a GUI along with it. I have been interacting with things using the settings app.

        • qwesx@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          What settings app? hp-toolbox is the program to use (which might in your applications menu as “HP Device Manager”), alternatively hp-setup to set it up from the CLI.