# Do NOT buy a Canon i Series printer

## orionrobots

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

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## Corona688

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

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## jpc82

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.

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## luugin

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.   :Sad: 

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

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## Evil Dark Archon

its pretty safe to say no and no way.

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## s2

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.

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## theosib

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.

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## tecknojunky

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  :Very Happy: 

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## orionrobots

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

From Canon themselves:

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> Thank you for your recent enquiry regarding your Canon product. 
> 
> Canon doesn't develop Linux drivers.
> ...

 

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## orionrobots

 *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
> ...

 

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.

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## water

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

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

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## ctford0

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!

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## barlad

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.

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## tom56

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.

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## chainsawbeer

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)

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## codergeek42

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

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## ag_x

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...

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## MiPo

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

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