Q:

How to remove old HPLIP in Ubuntu-Mate 18.04

I need to get working HP15w laserjet printer with Ubuntu-Mate 18.04 LTS (HPLIP ver. 3.17.10 included).
According to HP site, HP15w is supported starting from hplip 3.18+ release.
I found this guide, but surprisingly it turned out that hplip package has dependencies with whole desktop:
sudo apt purge hplip
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  hplip* printer-driver-postscript-hp* ubuntu-mate-core* ubuntu-mate-desktop*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 4 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 2,847 kB disk space will be freed.

I'm just interpreting something wrong? Or installer is going to remove all GUI from that computer?
We bought that printer a month ago and really need to get it working.

A:

Really the sudo apt purge hplip command will not end with GUI removal.
The command will remove MATE meta-packages but the MATE desktop itself will remain installed.
I have double tested this on fresh Ubuntu MATE 18.04 LTS.

