HP Officejet 5610 Works Great in Linux

I just bought an HP Officejet 5610 4-in-1 for home because we had a need for a copier and a fax machine. A scanner is something I also occasionally wish I had. So this thing does it all, and the best part is that it all works flawlessly in Linux, which is the reason I bought it (see "HP all-in-one device works great with Linux"). In fact, installing it was probably easier than it would have been in Windows for the following reasons:

• No need to insert a CD
• No need to reboot
• No need to finick with Windows and the way it handles USB devices. (If you've ever accidentally plugged a device into the USB port before installing the drivers and had it not work in the end then you know what I mean).
• No navigating through any install wizards

Photocopying and faxing (from the tray) worked right away without even plugging it into the computer.

Printing worked almost instantly (turns out that hpijs and hplip were already installed on my Ubuntu Feisty box, but I needed to install hpijs-ppds to get the HPLIP ppds) after adding the printer using KDE's printer management interface (I used to use the cups web interface but the KDE one is a bit easier to use nowadays). I haven't tried printing photos yet but there is a photo-quality option in the printer settings called "600 dpi, Photo, Full Bleed, Black + Color Cartr., Photo". I'm sure it works fine, just as it did for my old HP 710C and 920C.

I wasn't sure how to setup a fax queue in CUPS. It turns out the best way to do this (and to install a printer driver) is to just run "hp-setup". This installed a printer and a fax queue. So I just deleted the redundant printer that I had created in the paragraph above. The "hp-setup" wizard was maybe even a bit easier than the KDE Cups one. Now I have a fax and a printer in cups. I haven't tried faxing yet but printing to the fax queue works and I can see the faxes when I run "hp-sendfax" so it probably works.

Scanning was a breeze. No driver installation required, all I had to do was run kooka or xsane (better) and the scanner is detected automatically. xsane is really powerful and can do some automatic contrast and brightness adjustments as well as provide full manual control.

I would recommend this printer to anyone! I also use a Samsung ML-1740 laser printer by the way, and it is great and works well in Linux too. I have refilled the cartridge about 4 times now with cheap toner and the same cartridge works great. I was also able to get a backup refurbished cartridge for cheap.