HP printers and the hplip plugin

[pocock]

Some HP printers need a binary plugin

The hplip (open source package) tool can download the plugin directly from HP

The plugin is an x86 binary

At some point HP added support for ARM

In some cases, the printer and flatbed scanner will work fine without the plugin but to use more advanced features, e.g. the ADF duplex mode, you need to have the plugin.

Does anybody have any experience with this issue, for example:

- is there any printer/scanner/ADF setup that gives a completely or as much as possible free experience?

- can the plugin be executed with an emulator?

- did anybody already raise a support request with HP for a ppc64el binary of the plugin?

[MPC7500]

I have a HP multifunction printer. IIRC, I installed the hplip package.
It works without problems

[pocock]

It depends on the version of hplip and the printer model

E.g. for me, using Debian bullseye / hplip 3.22.6+dfsg0-1 the printer in question was working with the ADF for one-sided scanning.  Duplex scanning was not working.  It is M479fdn.

After upgrading to Debian bookworm / hplip 3.22.10+dfsg0-2 the ADF does not work at all

I have an x86 system running Debian bookworm connected to the same printer.  If the HP plugin is installed on the x86 system then the ADF works and it works for both sides in a single pass, full duplex scanning.

It seems that I can print without the hplip plugin, the problems only arise when scanning with the ADF

I have two other HP printers here that I can try.

[MPC7500]

Ah okay, this I have to check.

[pocock]

As I mentioned earlier, the M479fdn did seem to work partially with single-sided ADF scanning using Debian bullseye but it stopped working with Debian bookworm.  Maybe it is a regression in hplip or they shifted more logic from hplip to their closed-source plugin.

I tried another printer now, the HP M227sdn, same problems trying to use the ADF, it did not work at all.