Printer Update
REVISION 1.1
Our thanks to everyone who has provided feedback about their printer problems. We have a few possible solutions. Please let us know if any of these work for you! This page may change as we find new possible solutions. For each listed solution, reboot after installing new software and then test the solution.
1. If you have a HP Laser Jet 1000 Series printer, use Synaptic to install an extra driver, foo2zjs, which was not included in the latest RC, but will be in the final release.
2. For all other HP printers, use Synaptic to search for hplip and make sure all of the installed packages are the latest version, which is 0.9.7-4 as of December 16, 2005.
3. For all other printers, use Synaptic to search for foomatic-filters-ppds and install this package for more printer definitions.
4. If you have a parallel printer and you are installing Linux on the machine for the first time, make sure printer ECP mode is NOT selected in the BIOS.
5. If you have a HP printer, try the drivers in both the HP and HP(HPLIP) categories.
6. If you have a parallel printer, as root go to /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf and add a line that says: blacklist ppdev
7. If you're very adventuresome, with Synaptic, install: pmount udev hal and usbmount Then, if you have an intel sound chip, as root go to /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf and add a line that says: blacklist snd_intel8x0m With this change your printer may work, but ipod and onthego support will be broken.
8. If you have a HP parallel printer or an all-in-one and all else fails, install the hpoj driver. It is deprecated but it might work better than the hplip driver which just added parallel support recently. With hpoj you must identify your printer manually. When you install the package, brief instructions will be displayed in the Synaptic console window.
TIP: Want to get rid of those printer driver choices that never work (stp, omni) and gimp-print (that no longer exists)?
The problem is that the foomatic packages from Debian contain obsolete info. To clean it up, go to /usr/share/foomatic/db/source/driver and move or remove gimp-print.xml, omni.xml and/or stp.xml.
