How to install drivers for HP Deskjet 1112 Printer on Ubuntu

Hp Deskjet 1112

In a previous post we talked about the best wireless printers you can buy. In this post however we shall learn about installing the device driver for the HP Deskjet 1112 printer.

The HP Deskjet 1112 is a simple color printer. It has no scanner or copier function but can print pretty well and is easy to use at home or office.

First of all connect your printer and turn it on. Load it with a few papers to print the test page.

1. Install the Hplip device drivers and utilities

Installing HP printers on Ubuntu is not that difficult now a days. Compatible drivers are available right from HP.

HPLIP (HP Linux Imaging and Printing) project provides necessary device drivers to enable your Linux system to interact and communicate with HP printers.

The hplip library is available in the Ubuntu repository and most of the time installed by default. If they are not already installed run this quick command to grab them.

$ sudo apt-get install hplip hplip-gui hplip-ppds

2. Run the utility programs

The hplip package provides several utility GUI programs to manage and configure your printer easily. You can search them in the application launcher or menu of your desktop or run from the command line.

Here is a quick example -

$ hp-toolbox

This would open up the Printer management toolbox where you can check details about your current printer, do different tasks, configure it and add more printers. You can do things like print test page, check cartridge ink levels, configure several printing parameters and so on.

It is interesting to note how simple and easy the gui tools are compared to the equivalents on Windows where you have to install a huge bloat load of HP software to accomplish the same thing. With Linux things are often simple.

Hopefully your printer should be up and running by now. If you face any troubles let us know in the comment box below and we might be able to help out.

Thanks for reading.