HPLIP printing module, foo2zjp, and Google Cloud Print (HP p1102w)

My family has gone over mostly to Google, with Google Accounts for everyone, Chromebooks and Nexus devices. I say mostly because I still have my work computer and an old laptop which still run MS Windows.

The biggest drawback thus far has been a lack of printing support. Last year, we purchased an HP p1102w wireless b/w laserjet printer for around $100. Setup was relatively painless on Windows, but I messed around longer than I wanted to getting it to work with Google Cloud Print, with limited success. Thus, our printing options were limited to saving work in Google Docs and printing them from a Windows PC. That all changed yesterday!

In the process of setting up my Chromebook with Ubuntu 12.4.04, upgrade to a newer version coming soon, I decided to attempt printing to the wireless printer. The Samsung Chromebook I'm using has an ARM processor as do most Nexus devices. This causes some binary packages built for Intel to fail badly, most notably, Minecraft and Skype, from what I've read. This limitation bit me yesterday when I installed HPLIP, HP's open source Linux printing support, and my printer requires a proprietary plugin from HP, which is only available in binary form and has not been ported to the ARM processor. Major league fail!

Fortunately, there is an alternative driver for HP printers, foo2zjp. After uninstalling HPLIP, I installed foo2zjp and was finally able to print to the HP p1102w wirelessly. Haven't tried printing over USB, except using HPLIP, which failed, since I haven't needed to do so. I documented all of this on the Crouton Wiki as an alternative driver for HP printers, for printers requiring the proprietary HP plugin, and distros running on ARM, so perhaps a somewhat limited audience. I also posted my results on the Raspberry Pi user forum and voted, subscribed and commented on the bug report for HPLIP. Then I contributed via PayPal to the development effort for foo2jzp. After all, these guys are doing the heavy lifting.

In the process of doing all of this, I upgrading the firmware for the printer, and completed setup of Google Cloud Print, so I've realized my goal of a printing solution for the family, and we're able to print from the Google Chromebook, Nexus tablets, and smartphones to the laserjet printer. Not a bad day!

Next up will be installing the latest version of Ubuntu on the Chromebook using Crouton. I'm blogging this from the Ubuntu installation, and very few exceptions, could ditch Windows for this form factor and user interface.

That's enough for one day, Happy Mother's Day!