I have this printer - Canon i350 and my fortune is that there are no FREE Linux drivers for it. Now I was wondering if it were possible to use a windows driver and run the printer from Wine. Has this been attempted? Is it even remotely possible?

The fact that I have to reboot and switch to Windows every time I want to print something is quite annoying.

There are also drivers for Mac OS X. So if OS X is based on FreeBSD, which in turn is related to Linux, would it be easier to use a Mac emulator? I'm getting desperate here

Wine has no USB support.

Well, would it be capabile of printing on a parallel printer?

Googling "wine printer lpt" returns:
http://www.sdconsult.no/linux/wine-doc/configuring.html
So yes, I think that should work, although I've not done it myself.

Hi Aphex_Twin2,
Come to Daddy. [um... ick]
Do you use CUPS?
With Wine I have (nearly) no prob printing on my parallel port HP Laserjet 5L. Also I know I can print a blank page on my usb connected HP ink-squirter of some kind.
(I think I can print anything to it, but I don't use it much.)
BTW: I'm using Suse 9.1, KDE.
Something that I saw on a wine-related site or document said that printing from Wine is no prob if you use CUPS : I do use CUPS, it has worked for me.
Only problem has been that I can't print invoices from my accounting software. The printer just spits out a blank page.
I can print reports out of the same application, but not invoices. I am not entirely surprised: the invoices are not real documents in this application - they are just fields from the accounts database turned into printer instructions.
The failed attempts to print these invoices causes the laserjet to hang somehow, and every subsequent job from Wine or anywhere reports that the printer is out of paper: but that comes right after a time (e.g. overnight).
The accounting software, as if anyone was interested, is MYOB -- a quite old version, like 1995. (MYOB is widely used in Australia and New Zealand because it does our local sales tax right.)
Possibly I will yet make it print invoices by tampering with "wine/fake_windows/myob.ini section FONTS=[some settings] or something like that.
I also have a question: I have spent the whole night looking at the wine website and LQ searching for any tips about the best way to install MS Office 95 in Wine.
Can't find anything although I am sure I have read such things before.
I mean, do I put in the MSOffice CD and type [cd to cd drive] "wine setup.exe"?
Or what?
I have never installed anything in Wine before. I only took programs that are either old or small and copied them into the wine_fake_windows area. Has worked okay so far. But I would like to have MS Word 95 back. I used to do weird things with macros in Word and I want them back.
Also I really need my Access databases. Doesn't seem to be any easy way to get that to happen.
I wonder why I even bother: no wait, I remember -- because Linux doesn't crash every day.

I have printed to usb printer from wine before (I think it was from powerpoint). If I am not mistaken it just allocates your printers from cups. (It worked for me anyway).

Sure it does--A program running under WINE can see all the USB devices connected to the Linux box.

Google using "canon i350 linux cups" gives quite a few promising hits.

And, yes, you can print from WINE to any printer that is configured under Linux--it is a pass-thru.

Claims of USB (printer) support in this thread are actually referring to network printing,
which implies that the drivers exist+work in Linux, rather than using Windows drivers under Wine.

Here are some interesting notes that might help:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp....0244/match=usb
http://www.winehq.com/?issue=271#USB...%20(con't)