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?

  • qwesx
    1•11 months ago

    You’re supposed to use hplip for HP printers. There’s a Debian package for it in the main repositories.
    edit: You can look up the printers and supported features with hplip here. Looks like your printer is perfectly supported (as long as you let hplip’s tray program install their proprietary driver plugin).