Tuve un problema raro con una impresora HP 1020 que luego de instalarla bien, probarla y todo, cuando reiniciaba Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS no funcionaba más.

Buscando, encontré una respuesta en https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/249391 que me funcionó

Transcribo la respuesta de Sebastian (castanedacs)  que me funcionó:

I experienced similar problems, as cited in this forum, trying to configure the HP Laserjet 1018 printer with ubuntu desktop 14.04 and 14.10. At the begining I used HPLIP installed manually, and the printer worked fine for a while, I was able to print 3 or 4 documents, but then the printer started to fail with «communication error». After some combinations of unplug and re-plug, turn off on or reboot the printer works again, but this is an annoying situation, specially because I wanted to make the printer works for common users without any knowledge.

So I decided to try the solution installing the foo2zjs driver, these are the steps I followed, after reading many forums and potential solutions:

1) Uninstall HPLIP completely

1.1) Uninstall HPLIP if it was installed by default in ubuntu

$sudo apt-get remove hplip

1.2) In my case, I had installed HPLIP manually, after downloading the tarball distribution from

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html

So I followed the instructions cited here

http://hplipopensource.com/node/188

to completely unistall it.

2) Install the «foo2zjs» driver, to do this I used the instructions cited here

http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/INSTALL

I transcribe them here:

2.1) Install build-essential, tix, foomatic-filters, groff, dc FIRST:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential tix foomatic-filters groff dc

2.2) Unpack:

$ wget -O foo2zjs.tar.gz http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz
$ tar zxf foo2zjs.tar.gz
$ cd foo2zjs

2.3) Compile:

$ make

2.4) Get extra files from the web, such as .ICM profiles (for color correction)
and firmware. Select the model number for your printer, In this case:

$ ./getweb 1018 # Get HP LaserJet 1018 firmware file

2.5) Install driver, foomatic XML files, PPD files, and extra files:

$ sudo make install

2.6) Install hotplug (for HP LJ 1000/1005/1018/1020/P100[5678]/P1505):

$ sudo make install-hotplug

Unplug and re-plug the USB printer

2.7) If you use CUPS to manage your printers, you must restart cupsd:

$ sudo make cups

3) Add a new printer

I use the WEB APP to do this

http://localhost:631

Once created it, I printed a test page to test that the printer is working correctly

In my case I experienced problems using cups, so I reinstalled it with

$sudo apt-get -y install cups

NOTE:
I suggest to watch the log /var/log/syslog to detect any possible error.
For example, after installing foo2zjs, I detect the following error in syslog

«foo2zjs: Missing HP LaserJet 1018 firmware file /lib/firmware/hp/sihp1018.dl».

So, I fixed it by getting the firmware throught

$getweb 1018

Then I copied the file «sihp1018.dl» to the directory specified in the syslog error.

You may need to reboot both the computer and the printer.

After these steps I was able to print using the HP LaserJet 1018 printer without problems, I did differents test like print a test page, print a LibreOffice doc, print a pdf doc. I reboot the machine and printed again and the printer worked perfectly.
I tested using both Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10.

Hope this can help.