I'm running antiX 13.2 64-bit testing with KDE on my Core2Quad part time, planning to eventually make this my primary OS (replacing Mepis 11, which is getting pretty obsolete). I have two printers directly connected to this machine via parallel port. The Canon BJC-4300 (gutenprint driver) works just fine except for clogged heads. The HP Deskjet 722c won't install via the printer-driver-pnm2ppa 1.13-6 (from Debian testing) which I installed for it (it works fine in Mepis 11 on that driver).

When I try to install the Deskjet via Print Settings (from the KDE menu), the New Printer dialog discovers a Deskjet 720C (correct driver for this printer) on LPT1, but when I try to install that printer, there are no options under HP for a 700 series printer -- that is, only gutenprint driver supported printers are listed. The CUPS"web" interface gives exactly the same (negative) result. How can I get the pnm2ppa driver to be recognized?

Found this


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Maybe helps.

I downloaded that version of HPLIP. First, I'm not sure how to install it; just dropping it into a folder in /opt doesn't seem likely to work for something that I won't launch from a symlink. Second, I looked inside the tarball and didn't find any indication of PPD files for the Deskjet 720c or anything in its family. Third, pnm2ppa used to be the only way to print to a 700 series Deskjet; I understood these were never supported by HPLIP and gutenprint requires a fully implemented page description language of some kind (such as HPGL). Does pnm2ppa just not work in antiX, or is it broken in the testing repos?

Use the metapackage installer and choose option to install hp printers. That's about all I know.

Thanks for the suggestion, jdemaux, but that only installed HPLIP (well, once I manually fulfilled some dependencies) -- which I already knew didn't support this printer; when I tried to install the printer, it recommended the Deskjet 697C driver, which produced no output when I requested a test page. I took it back off, and I'm back to asking how to make printer-driver-pnm2ppa work in 64-bit antiX on testing/Jessie. I know that driver will at least print if I can get CUPS to see it -- but perhaps I have a CUPS version that's so new the developers have decided no one could possibly still be using a printer as old as the 722c (but that isn't supported by Gutenprint). Odd decision for people working on an OS known, as much as anything, for keeping old hardware in service...

Edit: AHA!! I did a search for"CUPS pnm2ppa" hoping to find a work-around for a new bug in an updated version of CUPS (newer in Jessie than in Mepis 11, based on Squeeze) -- and found a PPD file generator at the pnm2ppa home page instead. Adding a printer, then marking the radio button for"provide a PPD file" let me select the generated PPD file I'd downloaded, and (give or take a dry cyan tank) got me a good test page.

We knew you could do it. Congrats!