AI, Ubuntu Forums, Synaptic and an HP Laser Jet 1020

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For reasons you should not care about, recently I found myself needing to hook up my trusty, but well-worn and somewhat ancient HP Laser Jet 1020 to my Ubuntu Linux 25.04 machine. Several years ago this same printer was hooked up to another Linux machine, probably with Ubuntu 19.04 or thereabout. When I set out to connect to my current computer, I recalled that HP had some site where you could go to download drivers, and I recalled that the last time I installed this printer I used the terminal to download all sorts of supporting files. I also had a vague, somewhat repressed memory of what a pain in the bippus it was to finally make the printer functional on an Ubuntu machine. 

AI: HELP ME!

What I have at my disposal now, that I did not way back then, is AI search. So I went to Gemini AI, which I have found very useful in the past few months, but I went there with some reservations. Why the reservation? Because I suspected that AI would mostly return answers based on Ubuntu forums—with Stack Exchange being the largest source of (mis)information. Sure enough, Gemini's answer was dripping with the sewage that characterizes most Ubuntu forums, and defines Stack Exchange. But hey, the AI advantage was that it did do a deep dive and provided me with detailed instructions on at least two ways to get the printer up and running. The problem with this kind of AI research is that the AI has no way of validating the efficacy of the methods regurgitated from the cesspool of egg-headed programmers, programmer wannabe's, fix-it philosophers and technical fortune-tellers that inhabit the Ubuntu Forums swamps. As a result, most of the Bash commands returned by Gemini were either outdated or just flat out wrong, and after a couple of hours I knew I had to abandon the AI / Ubuntu Forum pursuit if ever I was to get anywhere. 

HP: HELP ME!

See AI, HELP ME! above.

A SHORT NAP, A SHORT PRAYER, AND SYNAPTIC PACKAGE MANAGER

So, I took a short nap. When I woke up, I asked myself what kinds of things I normally have done that have helped me to install drivers and utilities that are not commonly used. It didn't take long before I recalled that I always make sure that I have Synaptic Package Manager installed. Now, I don't really understand how Synaptic works (and I don't care), nor do I know what the folks behind Synaptic Package Manager do to work their magic, but I thought at least trying Synaptic would not hurt anything. So I opened the app, searched for hplip, and Synaptic brought up four "packages" associated with my search. I marked each package for installation, then clicked the Apply button. VOILA! Printer connected and works like a charm.  If I had thought of Synaptic PM from the get-go, I would have solved the problem in fewer than five minutes.

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