Let's assume that one has some modern HP printer and/or scanner which is not supported by HPLIP package from official repository.
Currently Ubuntu versions have the following versions in universe pocket:
trusty (14.04LTS) (utils): 3.14.3-0ubuntu3.4 xenial (16.04LTS) (utils): 3.16.3+repack0-1 bionic (18.04LTS) (utils): 3.17.10+repack0-5 focal (20.04): 3.20.3+dfsg0-2 groovy (20.10): 3.20.5+dfsg0-3build1
What can one do if printer is supported in newer version of HPLIP (checked this in HP Developer Portal | All Supported Printer Models)?
Best Answer
Installation
Currently there are no PPAs with newer
hplip
packages.But user can download and install binary from HP as described in their manual.
Before you proceed you should remove any
hplip
related packages to avoid possible future conflicts.HP have note about this problem on support page:
I have experimentally determined the list of packages (tested on 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS) and below are commands:
Then you should perform the following steps:
Step 1: Download the Automatic Installer (.run file) from official link for the Ubuntu or as for today using
wget
Step 2: Run the Automatic Installer
Then follow instructions on screen (it should ask password of your
sudo
-capable user to runapt
, and removehplip-gui
files if they were installed). The installation process is already well-documented on HPLIP site.After installation it will show printer installation wizard and you can add printer to the system.
Uninstallation
Here we start with binary HPLIP installation (so we do not have HPLIP-related deb-packages installed).
Let's consider that we have installation file
hplip-3.21.2.run
in the current directory. We need to extract archive from it and then run uninstallation script.Afterwards we install official Ubuntu packages instead (optionally):
Note: I have reported bug 1782137 to HPLIP's LaunchPad account asking developers to include uninstallation feature of deb-packages HPLIP components from Ubuntu.