Finally, Canon have made available drivers for selected Canon printers and Multifunctions, including some of the more recent models on their Asia support site. Why they don't make them available on their global site is beyond me, but the good news for some Canon owners is your printer or MFD may be supported.

Example, PIXMA MP520, a fairly recent model ships with only windows drivers on the CD, Linux drivers can be downloaded and installed as pre-compiled binary files for your chosen distribution from the following url.

http://support-asia.canon-asia.com/

The drives are provided in 2 parts. The first is a "common" package, which is gpl, the second (and most important) is the actual driver. Where a Linux driver is available, the source for the "common" package is provided along with rpm and deb binaries.

Again, using the MP520 as an example, previously, the only drivers available for Canon MFD's were those from Turboprint, but they shamelessly do not support the scanner component, which is a terrible let-down. The Asia support site has drivers for both the printer and the scanner.

I have not tried them yet, but as soon as I get the opportunity to do so, I will post back my findings.

Not all models are supported, but if you know of Canon user thinking of giving Linux a test drive, make sure you point them to the url above.

Mike P

And in Europe at:

http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0010487.asp

I happen to be a lucky(?) owner of a Canon pixma MP520 multifunction printer and it is really working well on my 3 PC home network
Desktop Dell Dimension 520 WinXP media center
Laptop Dell Inspiron 1501 WINXP/Linux Ubuntu 7.10
Laptop HP G5000 WIN Vista

I am running a dual boot on my Dell Laptop (WinXP and Ubuntu 7.10) and naturally I wanted to connect to my Canon MP520 printer there also. I have the Samba Server installed and when I do add new printer he readily finds my Canon 520 but can't install the correct driver. So it tries to run the Gutenberg driver(good for Canon pixma MP500) but I get only a blank page coming out of the printer.
On the Canon website europe I found this but I must admit being a complete newbie to Linux, I am kind of wary downloading those drivers and installing (where?). Did you do it in the meantime?If yes,what is the result.
Thanks

I did have a go and the drivers worked very well.

I was operating on a customers Debian based system, who wanted a MP520, so I made a new folder first, downloaded the 4 drivers (2 x common, 1 x printer, 1 x scanner) and installed them by opening a terminal window showing the folders contents and typing sudo dpkg -i *.deb

A few seconds later, the process finished and I went through the usual methods of installing a printer. The MP520 driver was added to the list of printers so I just selected it and finished the wizard, tested the printer and it printed the test page perfectly.

About the scanner, I did not see any of the typical Debian menu entries, so I tried using the built in scanner programs, (I run KDE, not Gnome) Kooka and it could not find a scanner, so I correctly guessed that Canon in their typical methods of operating in such a way as to pretend there are no other manufacturers of similar products, started looking for a scangear binary, which I found in /usr/bin, so I typed scangearmp into a terminal and sure enough, the ScanGear Toolbox popped up and I was able to scan a full color page.

If you run the KDE Desktop, adding a program to the menu is quite easy.
1. Right-click on the K-Menu and select Menu Editor
2. Highlight the place where you would like the new entry
3. Right-click there and choose "New Item". Now, name your new item, such as "Scangearmp". Now, hit enter, and you're taken to another menu where you will enter pertinent information about the app
4. Fill out the work path then the command. This will be "scangearmp"
5. Choose a nice icon and a comment, if you want.
6. Save your work, and you're done. You'll now see your new printer app in the menu, and you'll be happy.

Source for the above http://www.mepislovers.org/forums/sh...ad.php?t=13940

Sorry, I can't speak for adding stuff to the Gnome menu. Gnome is very pretty, but it's not my preferred desktop environment.

Mike P

Thank you MikeP, I followed more or less what you posted (I am using gnome,not kde) and it came out beautifully, just printed my Ubuntu testpage with my Canon Pixma MP520 over my network. Great!Now I see about the scanner.
Thanks a lot

Follow up: Got the scanner working too in Gimp only as they say on the Canon website (at least for Ubuntu) Great job!

I have a Canon MP240 and have installed the Canon drivers. It printed well at first, but now when I print black text it comes out gray. I replaced the black cartridge but the text is still gray. I believe it uses the color cartridge even when printing grayscale or black and that the black ink has run out of the color cartridge.

Anyone knows a solution or how I can set the printer to use the black cartridge?

I found what was causing it. If I select the paper type Letter 8.5"x11" (borderless), then black text comes out gray. But if I select the paper type Letter 8.5"x11", then black text prints well. I think if we select (borderless) the driver assumes we're printing color.

Am I right in concluding from thread contents that an MP170 multifunction will have no support for SCANNING function? Or is it a case of "maybe", in which case I will keep looking?

hmm looks like a resounding definite 'maybe'

Just went to ControlRoom Scanner setup, it said I needed stuff, I said OK, then typed Xsane in Konsole and all is good.

canon printers sometime needed to be reset. this is how you do it press the blinking buttons until the power button stops blinking. or go to printing preferences then chose normal or best in the preferences option. or chose black and white i think you hit the grayscale button on the preferences option.

I have a Canon MP520 as mentioned at the beginning of this thread. Could someone please point me to a beginner's guide to installing such a driver for my printer. I am using Linux Mint 15.

Download...

There are instructions about using the Canon linux drivers in the driver files you can download from Canon. You will find them after you extract the files.

http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/...XMA_MP520.aspx

If you meant the two manuals, they are listed under Linux OS but they are actually pertaining to use of the printer in Windows.

I have looked at the files inside the various files but can only find one .txt file and that is a licence document. Do you know the extension of the instructions file and/or which download they are contained in?