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A friend asked me to check why their Linux Acer Aspire netbook can't print to their HP printer. When I plugged in the USB cable, the a "balloon" popped up on the netbook saying it was installing the printer. But the printing does not work. I was able to get into a Settings area and click on Print Test Page but nothing happened.

If it was Ubuntu, I would go into the Log File Viewer, but I couldn't find that on whatever Linux flavor the Acer is running. I couldn't even figure out how to get to a terminal (shell) window. I tried searching the HP and Acer sites but nothing seems to apply to this issue.

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What was the model of the printer? – Col Aug 28 '09 at 7:43
The model was hp 5610 – JoelFan Aug 28 '09 at 16:16
The execute any command, you can use Alt+F2. BTW, you'll probably want to run xfce-setting-show, and enable "Show desktop menu on right click" to get better access to the system. – Ilari Kajaste Sep 11 '09 at 12:34

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I would try to install the "hplip" and try to get the printer to work with that.

That printer seem to be supported with hplip:

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The OpenPrinting site maintains the current status of printer compatibility on linux. Check if you can find your friend's printer on this list of HP printers. You can also look at the related Foomatic system for integrating free software printer drivers on linux.

The linux Acer Aspire comes pre-installed with the Fedora 8 based Linpus Lite Linux distribution.

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I found this link there... openprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-OfficeJet_5600 I'll try it when I go back to her house. But how to I get a terminal window on the Aspire? – JoelFan Aug 28 '09 at 16:19
Read this article: laptopmag.com/advice/how-to/aspire-one-apps.aspx The first step tells you how to bring up the terminal window. Read the remainder if you'd like to tweak the OS some more. – nagul Aug 28 '09 at 19:45

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