Help, printer, scanner, etc, help...

[Dougal]

My wife has bought herself a new Canon MP 480. It works well for her on Windows Vista (tuh, tuh, yuck...). Anyways I can't get the bloody thing to work on Ubuntu. I have 8.10 with Satanic Edition dressings and Crunchbang 9.04 installed from LXF magazine disc and neither of them will actually print even though they have both picked up the correct MFD model when connected.
What can I do about this? I have searched for Linux drivers but, can find none.
I have a message window popping up in 8.10 which I think I have attached but, I am unsure what to do about it.
Any valuable assistance gratefully appreciated as I need to get some literature scanned and printed. Oh I can't get XSane to find the scanner on the device either.
Do I have to give in and use Vista to do this work? Oh, no... please say no, someone, please...
Cheers.

[Hal343]

You will have to use Vista. In the linux hardware compatibility database this printer is known as a paperweight-totally unsupported. Canon is one of the Windows-only manufacturers, who occasionally put out drivers for linux. You can keep checking their website for drivers, they may eventually support it.

[minthaka]

OpenPrinting User Forums :: Printers from Canon :: Looking for compatible driver for MP480
And don't make friends with the devil!

[teenytinylinuxgrl]

A package called jockey-gtk finds non-free drivers, but mostly it works to help locate video and wireless drivers. I don't know about printer drivers though.

HP is known to be among the most Linux-friendly of printer manufacturers, and they have some nice cheap ones at your local Wal-Mart. Mine worked right out of the box in Ubuntu 9.04. It works on my friend's 8.10 too.

Amy

[minthaka]

Amy, he was looking for a driver for Canon MP480!

[bigvoo]

try to print something, a box should pop up asking if you want to search cannon for the drivers... I have a cannon mp140 ( the one you get free from frys when you buy a cmoputer) it doesn't come up in the cannon page, so I clicked the next series after mine mp 150...and it works flawlessly...I would think that if a free cannon printer works in linux, an actual real printer like yours should work.

[fguy64]

I know nothing about that specific printer, but as a general strategy with printers, consider an older generic driver that works with everything that will give you basic formatted print. I imagine that with linux, as it is with windows, one can point any driver to any printer and hope for the best, sometimes you get lucky.

Anyways, consider those as last resort suggestions if nothing else works.

[oz]

If it's imperative that you get it printing under Linux, you can try TurboPrint:

ZEDOnet | Printer Driver | TurboPrint Linux

I don't think TurboPrint will help with the scanner function, however.

[penguin2]

My two cents: maybe try VirtualBox and then install Windows on the Linux host. Use the printer from there...

[minthaka]

My two cents: maybe try VirtualBox and then install Windows on the Linux host. Use the printer from there...

The problem with that approach is, that Virtual Box is a software under Linux, and every program of Windows installed inside VirtualBox can only communicate with the hardware via Linux. So if your Linux doesn't recognize a device, neither Windows will do.