I recently moved to a new continent, and discarded my old HP printer (which after many years was still running fine - but I did not want to pay the expense of shipping it). To replace it, I purchased a relatively inexpensive HP 2675 Deskjet Ink Advantage 2675 All-in-one printer. One of the reasons I chose the 2675 is its HP Ink Advantage 680 cartridges are not as expensive as many other HP cartridges. I find ink for HP printers tend to be more expensive than cartridges for some of the competition printers, BUT the aspect I like about HP printers is they typically have good GNU/Linux support.
Of course this is a Blog, and my views are very subjective. I propose anyone wanting to discuss such, raise it our our forum Chit Chat area in a polite manner.
The three things I needed to accomplish were:
- install the printer on to our Wireless Local Area Net (WLAN)
- setup printer from my openSUSE LEAP
- setup scanning from my openSUSE LEAP
Connect printer to WLAN
The first thing I did, with this new printer at home, was I downloaded the user-manual for the 2600 series printers. i.e. RTFM … where of course most was for MS-Windows and Mac OS users … but I was able to learn aspects useful for GNU/Linux. The manual is here as a PDF file.
In particular, I noted on page-62 a method to easily connect the printer to one’s WLAN, if one’s router supports “WPS”. i.e. Wifi Protected Setup. The goal of WPS is to allows users to more easily connect their printers to a Wireless Network without having to struggle through network settings. As noted, it requires a router that supports WPS.
Fortunately, my router in our new condominium unit does support “WPS”.
To install the printer on the LAN I performed the following:
- Pressed and held the Wireless button (on the printer) for more than three seconds. This starts a “WPS push mode” on the Printer. Next …
- Pressed the WPS button on my router
There is a note in the manual, that the product begins a timer for approximately two minutes while a wireless connection is established between the printer and the router. This is followed by a comment that if the printer connects successfully, the blue “Wireless” light on the printer stops blinking and remains on (ie a solid ‘blue’).
Within 15 seconds of my pressing the WPS button on the router, the blue “Wireless” light on the printer went solid.
Next I used my Android phone “Fing Application” to check which devices were currently using my Wireless LAN (WLAN). I noted immediately a new device, that had not been there before, entitled “HPxxxxxx” where “xxxxx” is the MAC-ID of the HP device.
That confirmed to me the printer was on the nextwork. Further, I noted from Fing that the Printer’s WLAN IP address (for my WLAN) was 192.168.0.107. Knowing that IP address is handly for the manual method in which I use to connect my GNU/Linux laptop (running LEAP-15.0) to a printer on my LAN (with YaST).
CONNECT LEAP-15.0 to Printer (both print function and scanning function)
Next it was a simple matter to connect my openSUSE laptop (running LEAP-15.0) to the printer for printing and scanning using the method I documented in this blog entry years ago for my HP all-in-one C309A (which works ok for my new HP All-In-One 2675):
- For printing: Connecting openSUSE to an HP wireless printer. I documented this method for openSUSE-12.1 ( !! ) and this technique still works today for openSUSE-LEAP-15.0.
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Note this is a MANUAL method and in the most part totally skips any automated discovery. It requires HPLIP software to be installed on one’s openSUSE ( … ie. “hplip” , “hplip-pijs”, and “hplip-sane” ).
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It also requires one know the IP address of the printer on one’s WLAN, which I noted above.
. - For scanning: Setting Up in openSUSE a network scanner from an all-in-one-printer-scanner.
After the above, printing and scanning over our home WLAN worked fine.
I found the above very basic … but then I’ve been running GNU/Linux for more than 2 decades.
If anyone has problems, please do not post on this blog, but rather start an appropriate openSUSE forum thread.