Comment 48 for bug 1847142

I came across this only recently, noticing that the ScanJet Pro 2500f1 I bought some three years ago is now supported under Linux. Thanks to HP for finally having fixed this major issue with that device. So I went for installing it on Ubuntu Focal (20.04).

I still spent quite some time to find that the solution is rather quick - here it is for the records.
My 2500f1 is connected to a Ubuntu 20.04 Focal (amd64) system. HPLIP is installed by default (3.20.3+dfsg0-2).
Findings worth noting are:
- Apart from hplip and its automatic dependencies, no other hplip-specific packages from the
Ubuntu repositories need installing.
- The scanner needs the proprietary plug-ins from HP.
- Downloading and running the plug-in installer (v 3.20-3) from HP's HPLIP Web site does _not_ work. (Apparently the Debian packager has chosen a different file structure from what HP expects.)
- Instead, /usr/bin/hp-plugin (or /usr/bin/hp-plugin-ubuntu grabs the files and puts them into the place the Debian/Ubuntu hplip expects them in. It also creates the symbolic links mentioned in comment #47 - nothing to do manually.

I did not touch any files in /lib/udev/rules.d. Initially a non-privileged 'scanimage -L' failed to show the scanner, 'sudo scanimage -L' found it. After a reboot, this issue was magically solved, non-privileged access via sane (for example by xsane, simple-scan etc.) works fine.
(I had used another scanner on that system previously.)

I note in passing that one of my unsuccessful attempts was to forget about the Ubuntu packages and install hplip from the HP Web page (newest release at the time of writing, 3.21.2). The automatic installer got me into the dependency hell Sab was mentioning earlier - the package dependencies could not be resolved without (very) undue effort. I was surprised to see that a very popular Linux distribution is so poorly supported by a generic Linux installer - there is potential for HP for improvements!