I have a Canon i560, and am running slackware 10. I am using cups to print.. and connected using localhost:631.. my printer is not on the list of printers.. so i did some googling, and found a site with the drivers. i can't post the URL =/

I tried a few files, but didn't have any luck.. it could also be i don't know what i'm doing.. can anyone help me out with this? What do i need to do, and what files do i need?

has anyone gotten their i560 to work, and if so .. how?

...also.. how do i know which USB printer to use, in cups

For all those poor soles out there with a Canon printer on Linux.

I myself own a Canon i560 and after using the BJC 7000, bjc7100 and bjc 8200 drivers I was unsatisfied with the quality outputs, expecially for photo printing.

I then tried the famous Turboprint evaluation drivers from www.turboprint.de and the quality was amazing in all aspect. My photos were perfect in GIMP 2.0.

But the Turboprint drivers are not free. They cost 35$ USD for a single license.That pissed me off and I did not want to pay for drivers witch are free on Windows. Everybody knows Canon does not support Linux, in North-America anyway.

So I researched my ass off on the Web and found out everything I could about printers in Linux and Canon.

I found the solution and I am going to share it with you.

1) Canon did create drivers for the i series printers, but in Japan! Here they are. In Japan my i560 is called a Pixus560i. (All the i series drivers are there and many others)

ftp://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/bj/linux/

For the i560 you need to download 2 files (I use Mandrake 10.1 but the source tar.gz are there too)

bjfiltercups-2.4-0.i386.rpm

bjfilterpixusXXXi-2.4-0.i386.rpm


Install bjfiltercups-2.4-0.i386.rpm

Then bjfilterpixusXXXi-2.4-0.i386.rpm. It might have a dependancy issue for libpng.so.2. If so look here http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3 for your Distro package of the libpng2 package. I installed libpng2-1.0.12-2.2mdk.i586.rpm.

After that bjfilterpixusXXXi-2.4-0.i386.rpm installed without a problem.

2) Reboot your system

3) go in your printer manager and look for your driver under Canon. It is called "Multipass Pixus XXXi"

Voila!

I tested it and its perfect. Great text and picture quality

Hi,

I too have a canon i560 and can vouch for what steel j has written. I also had the same problem with the libpng, but if you (like me) already have a different libpng installed, you don't need to install a fresh one, you can just type the following as root

to create a symbolic link.

Then you need to add your printer, which really is a doddle:

open a browser and go to the following page:

http://localhost:631/printers

choose <Add Printer>
After you've given it a name and optionally a description, the next page asks for a Device. I chose:
On the next page, select canon as the model and on the final page, the driver:
[CODE]Canon PIXUS 560i ver 2.4(en)[CODE]

and that was that. Make sure that you download the same cups version number as printer driver, otherwise nothing happens (and I know cos I did it)

I tried the symlink to libpng3 but that did not work for me.

Hi

what didn't work? Did the command fail? If so, were you logged on as root? Have you got libpng3 installed? Or do you mean that you still can't install the files?

The symlink is created wihtout problem.

Yes, I use root for every kind of install and the rpm still refused to install. Only when I installed the older libpng2 that it installed.

Worked fine ever since.

The only little complaint I have is the driver has many type of preset paper sizes, but no 4x6 or 5x7.

When I get the time I am going to try and modify the PPD file or something to add those sizes.

Anybody know where those settings are in the driver files?

About this symlink thing - the rpm won't know that you've done that, so you would have to install it without checking for dependencies, thus:

cd to the directory with the files and (as root) install them manually:

The --nodeps means don't check for dependecies.

As for the other stuff - I'm afraid I can't help you with that.

Very good point. I did not think to use the --allow-nodeps option of urpmi. That would make it work tough.

So both options are valid, but the symlink one seems easier.

Steel_J, you are the man

I'm still dual booting to XP because I haven't got any decent output from my i560

I'm going to install this stuff tonight. Maybe I can get rid of Windows without replacing any more hardware !!!

Just one little thing. If you print from Mozilla or Firefox web browser the driver seems to mix up "portrait" with "landscape". Just do the opposite of what you want.

It's only in those program. Also if you print from the web, go in setup and shrink the page to 75%-80% so everything fits on the page.