Ok, thanks for reading =)

This was a part of a post before, but it fizzled, so I thought I'd try again more concisely:

I've got a mostly-fresh install of Ubuntu, it has wine, flash, etc.

My printer won't work through cups, I made a new root password with

>>>
$sudo passwd root
<<<

So anyway, I tried to run through Ubuntu's printing applets, but it put it on hpijs (who comes up with these acronyms?) and I switched it to pcl3 but it didn't spray any ink from gedit, so now I switched it back to hpijs and it seems to be talking to the printer, but it won't actually spray any ink. There's no color cartridge in the printer right now.

Help?

Maybe time to get some ink.

I said that because I'm printing in black and white.

EDIT: Or trying to.

Fizzle #2 then...

If the computer is able to commuicate with the printer and the printer doesn't print, I would change the ink cartridges to see if that helps.
If the color cartridge has been empty for some time, that makes the black ink go in a hurry as much of the time, black comes from all of the colors combined.

Having the same prob! Exactly. I have no color cartridge in either...but I know my black one is fine cause I can print from windows. I thought for sure this thing would work...

Found a solution. Configure the printer as 842c in the printing dialogue in Ubuntu. Don't know why, but it worked for me! I'm printing whatever quite happily.