Im a total newbie, let me come up front with that, but if im running a 2575 photosmart printer by hp and there is no listed driver (some are close such as 2560), what am i to do to get a match?

First of all, try the graphical tool of Gnome ("Printers" or what does it say?), start to add a printer and see if it suggests you some drivers. If it does, you're ok. If not, google a bit like "hp 2575 photosmart linux driver" and see if you get a match of some other driver working for that too - I've seen numerous cases where drivers with a bit different names/numbers have worked on almost-alike devices. If that won't do, try either HP's site or do more googling and try to find a downloadable driver package; when you extract it, you should find a driver file which you can use to install the printer. If the graphical Printer tool in the Gnome menu doesn't ask you for an external driver, you can use the web-interface of CUPS to add the printer (with more options I think); open up a browser and type

http://localhost:631

or if "localhost" doesn't work, put the ip address 127.0.0.1 in it's place. You should get a cups web interface anyway, so try with it, it's pretty good.