Minor challenges on the Linux Desktop part 999 update

Posted on zo 23 oktober 2022 in hardware

So I'm still in the process of getting my Dell XPS Desktop from 2012 tweaked running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 9 as an operating system.

The reason I moved from Zorin to RHEL was because of kernel driver issues running VMWare Workstation on Zorin. Ofcourse now that I'm running RHEL, I found a more or less blocking issue on this system.

I have this mainstream HP laserjet at home, which on Ubuntu based desktops runs fine using the hplip package from Hewlet Packard. But for reasons unknown to me, there is no build (yet?) that supports RHEL9. I resorted to the RHEL8 packages, but alas.

Trying to install the package anyways fails miserably. Taking the self extracting installer from Sourceforge too.

bash-5.1$ sudo dnf install ./hplipclassdriver-3.22.6-RHEL8-x86_64.rpm 
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Last metadata expiration check: 0:28:58 ago on zo 23 okt 2022 07:26:38 CEST.
Error: 
 Problem: conflicting requests
  - nothing provides libImageProcessor.so()(64bit) needed by hplipclassdriver-3.21.8-0.x86_64
  - nothing provides libImageProcessor.so(VERS_1.0)(64bit) needed by hplipclassdriver-3.21.8-0.x86_64
(try to add '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages or '--nobest' to use not only best candidate packages)

Sure, I know that I could probably hack it together by just extracting the CUPS definition and loading that. But chances that I get all the options supported that way are slim.

begin 19:31u update

Apparently the HP website does not carry the hplip package for RHEL9, but a version is provided in the RHEL9 package archive itself. Not sure if it includes support for the scanner and other extended functionality, but printing should be covered :-)

end update

I must admit that it are issues like this that have kepped me from running Linux as my main desktop OS in most settings. It just takes more time to get things set up, if it works at all. All fine when just playing around on a Sunday morning, but just not worth the time and money in a professional setting, unless you have a fleet of Linux desktops/laptops all running more or less the same setup.

Betterbird Screenshot

The good news is that my exploration of the RHEL9 desktop pointed me to an alternative mailclient. I've been switching back and forth between Evolution and Thunderbird mostly on Linux, but right now I'm trying Betterbird. Yes it is a Thunderbird clone with improvements. Looking very clean and good sofar.