[Solved] Downgrading cups driver?

[Agrippinus]

Hello,

I got pictures in a LibreOffice Writer document which were perfectly printed but not anymore: bad definition and bad brightness and contrast.

On another partition, I've got Mint 20.3 as a rescue solution (my system is Mint 21.1).
In this Mint, the very same file is printed perfectly.

In the Printers Manager I can read:
Mint 21.1: HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series, driverless, cups-filters 1.28.15
Mint 20.3: HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series, driverless, cups-filters 1.27.4

I checked in the Update Manager: 11 cups packages were upgraded on June 1st; perhaps this is the source of the bug?

Is it possible to downgrade the driver and how?

Thank you for your help.

[MikeNovember]

Hello,

I got pictures in a LibreOffice Writer document which were perfectly printed but not anymore: bad definition and bad brightness and contrast.

On another partition, I've got Mint 20.3 as a rescue solution (my system is Mint 21.1).
In this Mint, the very same file is printed perfectly.

In the Printers Manager I can read:
Mint 21.1: HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series, driverless, cups-filters 1.28.15
Mint 20.3: HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series, driverless, cups-filters 1.27.4

I checked in the Update Manager: 11 cups packages were upgraded on June 1st; perhaps this is the source of the bug?

Is it possible to downgrade the driver and how?

Thank you for your help.

Hi,

Maybe the problem is "driverless". Driverless printing is recent on Linux Mint/Ubuntu and does not work well every time.

With your computer, you have another solution: to print with driver. Driver is provided by HP, and is part of hplip.

You can read this tutorial, both solutions (driverless or with drivers) are described: viewtopic.php?t=394754.

Regards,

MN

[Agrippinus]

Hello MikeNovember,

I have read the (great!) tutorial you made and gave me the link to.

I checked that cups was fully functional by reaching to the web interface at http://localhost:631/admin

I checked that hplip was already installed:

Code: Select all

philippe@Entroware:~$ sudo dpkg -s hplip
[sudo] Mot de passe de philippe :          
Package: hplip
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 508
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 3.21.12+dfsg0-1
Depends:

I was about to uninstall ipp-usb and sane-airscan as you recommend because these packages prevent the printer from working WITH drivers.

Before that, as a reference copy (reference as badly printed actually…) I printed the very image I had until now printed correctly in Mint 21 but had to print in Mint 20 just before I created this thread on the forum and lo! the printing is now perfect again.

Did the printing in Mint 20 make something on the printer? Did the printer re-initialise something when turned on again?

Whatever the case your answer was great (I've learnt a lot of things with your tutorial and will keep the link on hand)!

I must say honestly that I am a little ashamed that there was no bug behind all this…

I mark the thread as "Solved" and I thank you a lot!

P.S. If someone interested passes through here, my printer is HP OfficeJet Pro 9012 and until now it has worked perfectly, both for the printer and the scan under Linux (I don't have Windows), the last versions of Mint Cinnamon since November 2020 when I bought the printer.