Comment 22 for bug 428817

I was having this problem on Ubuntu 18.10 (WOW, THIS PROBLEM HAS BEEN AROUND FOR A VERY LONG TIME) with my HP LaserJet 500 color M551 printer. When I tried to install it, the driver that kept getting selected was "HP LaserJet 500 color M551, driverless, cups-filters 1.21.3". This, despite the fact that I have "hpijs-ppds", "hplip", and "hplip-data" installed.

I solved the problem by downloading the current version of HPLIP directly from HP (https://sourceforge.net/projects/hplip/ or https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing), unpacking it, locating the PPD for my printer in the source code ("hp-laserjet_500_color_m551-ps.ppd"), and changing the configured driver of the printer installed in Linux to specify that PPD directly rather than using the recommended driver.

I think the problem here, or at least one of the problems here, is not nearly all of the HP printer drivers are being installed by Ubuntu. In particular, while I can't say for certain, it looks to me like the hpijs-ppds package is only installing a few fax drivers, not the full array of drivers available in HP's HPLIP package. I have no idea why that's the case.