Do NOT buy a Canon i Series printer

Message

orionrobots · Post by **orionrobots** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 6:46 pm

These have very little if any support under any distribution of Linux.
My advice is to buy another brand - if it must be USB, and avoid Canon USB printers like the plague.

Their linux support is non-existant at worse, and unusable at best. There was a half-hearted attempt for a couple of models - with an RPM that only works on a certain version of redhat(none of mine), and tarballs that do not build as they require binaries that are unavailable.

USB Printers are not always this painful - but Canon have made their position clear that they are not interested in supporting us. Thats fine - I refunded my Canon i350, and bought a HP printer with a great deal of support.

Just to pass on the sentiment - if you bought one of these printers, take it back or sell it to a windows user who doesnt care, and buy a HP one - as you will have a greater chance of it working with your Linux machine.
Cheers
OrionRobots

Corona688 · Post by **Corona688** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:05 pm

Epson USB printers also have quite good support under linux in my experience, the Stylus and Photo series in particular.

jpc82 · Post by **jpc82** » Wed Jun 23, 2004 7:08 pm

just to throw in my 2 cents.

I personally LOVE Epson printers. My Epson 880 serves my whole family connected to a Gentoo File/Print server, and the quality is great. Also, as long as you have the right use flags setup is very simple with cups.

However, the reason I truly love epson is becuase of the price of their ink. I can get colour for $9CAD, and black for $7CAD.

I find it crazy that for many printers its just cheaper to buy a whole new printer(which comes with ink) then it is to by two new ink cartrages.

luugin · Post by **luugin** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 1:00 am

I recently got a canon i560 printer, and im very dissapointed in the lack of linux support for it. I've been windoze-free for over a year, but now im considering a dual-boot just to get the damn printer working.

Will there eventually be support for this printer? How could one find out?

Evil Dark Archon · Post by **Evil Dark Archon** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 1:56 am

its pretty safe to say no and no way.

s2 · Post by s2 » Mon Jul 05, 2004 1:57 am

I have a Canon i320...
ixxx printers CAN be made to work under linux, but involves use of closed-source drivers, available at
www.turboprint.de
The download is a demo driver which will print but has their logo superimposed on prinouts at random places. Works with cups, lpr, etc.
Only catch is $30 for a keyfile which removes the logo from printouts.
Not a great option, but definitely better than buying another printer or dual-booting.

EDIT: only i250, i320 and i350 have the annoying demo logo...
other Epson, HP and Canon printers they support should 'just work' with the demo.

Hope this helps.

theosib · Post by **theosib** » Mon Jul 05, 2004 3:45 am

I have a Samsung ML-2152W laser printer, and it's GREAT. The Linux drivers that come with it install under Gentoo with no problems at all, and everything works great.

Of course, this is a network printer, so that may have something to do with the ease of installation. It has USB, but I've never tried to use it.

tecknojunky · Post by **tecknojunky** » Tue Jul 06, 2004 4:32 am

One must say that Canon makes very good printers for their prices.

I too have been Windows free for about 1 year. Since all the printers I had were all Canons, I've out of printers since I made the switch. Oh, not that I did not try to install it, I have CUPS on my Gentoo boxes, it's just that CUPS rimes with SUX: hard to con"figure".

So, no printers for me. I'm still relying on Windows for that. Go Bill go! It's not to late to save the OS

orionrobots · Post by **orionrobots** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 3:01 pm

I actually emailied Canon uk - asking about their lack of support for linux, this is what I got back:

From Canon themselves:

Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding your Canon product.

Canon doesn't develop Linux drivers.

You can check one of the following links for a suitable driver:

http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/p_Sup ... nters.php3

www.linuxprinting.org

We hope this information is of use to you. However, should you require any further
technical assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us quoting your Incident
number.

To contact us via email, click on the following link:

https://self-service.canon-europe.com/u ... gi?LANG=en.

Note: Please do not reply to this email using your "REPLY" tab.

Kind Regards,

Canon UK

orionrobots · Post by **orionrobots** » Tue Jul 13, 2004 3:04 pm

s2 wrote:I have a Canon i320...
ixxx printers CAN be made to work under linux, but involves use of closed-source drivers, available at
www.turboprint.de
The download is a demo driver which will print but has their logo superimposed on prinouts at random places. Works with cups, lpr, etc.
Only catch is $30 for a keyfile which removes the logo from printouts.
Not a great option, but definitely better than buying another printer or dual-booting.
Hope this helps.

Thing is, for that $30 (on top of the cost of the printer) you may as well buy a better printer from Epson or HP - both of whom have fairly decent support for linux. I think network printers are greta if they are affordable...

My Canon has gone - and I wont be buying, or recommending one again.

water · Post by **water** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 11:14 am

Things are getting better: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=94604

Support for at least Canon i250, i455, i550, i850 and i950

ctford0 · Post by **ctford0** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:34 pm

I will never buy anything canon again. I have a printer and a scanner that will not work in linux. My printer is pretty nice, its 3-4 years old now, BJC5100. It prints super fast, but still doesn't have linux support. Get this; when WinXP came out canon said that they would not be issuing XP drivers for my printer. That sealed the deal for me, no more canon ever!! Canon sucks!

barlad · Post by **barlad** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 1:30 pm

I have an Epson Stylus Photo XXX. I cannot remember the number. The printer was easy to install but god... printing quality is awful compared to what I get under Windows.

I must admit that the printing system under Unix is a pain and mystery to me so I never took much time to look into it (gimp, foomatic, postscript, ...). I suppose that with some time, I could get it working as well as under Windows.

So... Epson is indeed a good choice.

tom56 · Post by **tom56** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 3:11 pm

hp have excellent linux support. i have a hp psc 750 and was very impressed with the fact that hp have official linux drivers. for those having trouble setting up their printers the site www.linuxprinting.org is very good.

chainsawbeer · Post by **chainsawbeer** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 7:53 pm

before you completely trash canon, don't forget printers aren't all they make... heh.. sorry... off topic a bit, but I'm a total canon whore when it comes to digital cameras. I shoot on a EOS-10D and everything is fine uner linux (of course I unload the images onto my machine via a pcmcia cf adapter but still heh)

codergeek42 · Post by **codergeek42** » Fri Jul 23, 2004 10:54 pm

I have an Epson Stylus C60 that worked beautifully in FC1...I haven't gotten around to actually installing it on Gentoo yet...

ag_x · Post by **ag_x** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 5:35 am

Well to be honest i have a S400 Canon and works pretty good with gentoo(it took me less than 15 minutes to make it work) but maybe its that model only.
Maybe we need a separate ---Hardware compatible with Gentoo (like graphic cards,printers,laptops.etc.. .)--- section in this forum.And specific Hardware model threads, like Canon S400 or Ati Radeon 9600 or fujitsu-siemens E4010 etc...

MiPo · Post by **MiPo** » Sat Jul 24, 2004 10:13 am

I used to habe Epson Printers altough I often had problems with the ink and disliked the price of their cardridges

. So I searched for a cheaper long-time solution and finally got a Canon S500. I saw that there was a solution with the TurboPrint driver from www.irseesoft.de. Ok, it's not free, I had to pay once. But now I have continuous cheap ink, a super printer-driver working with cups or anything else and I really like the printout of my printer.

Do NOT buy a Canon i Series printer

Do NOT buy a Canon i Series printer

Get Samsung!