Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. wrote:
On Monday 10 May 2010 14:16:21 Kent West wrote:Something I've never figured out with Debian is how to know which package to install to get a certain printer driver.I suggest just installing all the packages listed from (aptitude search '- ppds$'). This should catch more printers than most users need.
I may resort to that, but it sure seems messy.
I know I've printed to this HP Color Laserjet CM3530 from a Debian box before, but I have no idea what package I had installed to do so, nor what driver I chose (since I can't find the CM3530 listed in my web-based CUPS setup (localhost:631)).For HP printers, I suggest using the hp-toolbox which can be found in the hplip-gui package. If the cups web interface is more comfortable for you, the printer drivers provided by hplip (HP LInux Printing) project are in the hpijs-ppds package.
I tried installing hpijs-ppds, but I still don't see the CM3530 listed; I do now see a Color Laserjet 3550 (without the CM, and not the 3530), but who knows if that'd work? Not me.
The hplip-gui package is already installed, but running "hplip-gui" did nothing. "man hplip-gui" did nothing (I thought all Debian packages are supposed to have a man page, even if it does nothing more than point to some other documentation?). (Looking in /usr/share/doc/hplip-gui would have eventually maybe clued me to the hp-toolbox, but thankfully you've already pointed me to it so I didn't have to dig blindly.)
The hp-toolbox said no device is set up, and to run hp-setup (as root). It failed to automagically find my printer, but I chose to use the Manual button and enter the printer's IP address, and now it presents me with a list of six possible PPD drivers, none of which have names very close at all to my printer (cm4730, cm6030, cm4730, and Postscript variants of those).
Arg.Thanks for the help though. At least I'm seeing stuff I've never seen before. (And they say Windows is hard to configure. Pfft. (Sorry for the ranting; I'm just frustrated. I really do love Debian, and really do hate Windows.))
-- Kent West <*)))>< http://kentwest.blogspot.com Praise Yah! \o/