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This how-to is outdated and may therefore be useless in Linux Mint 21.x.
A Canon PIXMA printer is easily installable in Linux Mint. Note: the following how-to is only meant for Pixma printers!
Connect your printer to your computer by means of a USB cable (even when you intend to use it as a network printer later on: for initial installation a USB cable is often needed). Then turn on your printer.
Default: driverless printing/scanning with IPP
Starting with version 21, Linux Mint features driverless printing and scanning. Printers and scanners are detected and added automatically. Communication with the printer/scanner is being done through a standard protocol called IPP.
No drivers are needed; installed drivers are not being used.
So far, so good. But sometimes you've got to do the following, in order to get your printer/scanner to work (properly):
1. Is your printer/scanner not working (well)? The default driverless IPP takes priority as long as it’s installed; drivers won’t be used. So in order to try a driver instead, you first need to remove IPP support from your computer.
Proceed like this:
a. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)
b. Copy/paste the following command line into the terminal:
sudo apt-get remove ipp-usb sane-airscan
Press Enter and submit your password. Please note that in Ubuntu the password will remain invisible, not even asterisks will show when you type it, which is normal. In Linux Mint this has changed: you'll see asterisks when you type. Press Enter again.
Then proceed with step 2 below.
2. Sometimes it's necessary to add a printer or scanner to the system yourself, by means of the application Printers. In that case the application Printers already contains the driver for your printer, but you have to "indicate" the printer first.
So launch the application Printers. You can use the search box in your menu to find it; it's present by default in all editions of Ubuntu and Linux Mint.
In the application Printers, click the button Add (with the + sign) and follow the steps it offers you.
If this fails, for example because your printer is too new for the database in your version of Linux Mint, then proceed with step 3:
3. Go to the Canon website and download the driver for your PIXMA printer. When you have a multifunctional printer that also contains a scanner: download at this point only the driver for the printer part of your multifunctional.
Note: you have to select the driver package with the following tag:
(debian Packagearchive)
4. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)
Now copy/paste the following command into the terminal, in order to unzip the downloaded file:
cd Downloads && tar -xvzf ~/Downloads/cnijfilter*deb.tar.gz
Press Enter. With that, you unpack the downloaded file.
5. Now launch your File Manager and go to the folder Downloads. In that folder you'll find another folder with a long name, that starts with cnijfilter.
Open that folder and click through to its subfolder packages.
6. The next step differs for 64-bit and 32-bit. So check whether your system is 64-bit or 32-bit (item 11).
Double-click first the package called cnijfilter-common. For 64-bit select the one whose name ends on amd64.deb and for 32-bit select the one whose name ends on i386.deb.
With that, you install the package.
Then double-click the package cnijfilter-(name of your printer series). For 64-bit select the one whose name ends on amd64.deb and for 32-bit select the one whose name ends on i386.deb.
7. Reboot your computer; your printer should be able to print now. Note that you may possibly have to add it first to your system, by means of the application Printers (as described in step 1 on this page).
For multifunctional printers with a scanner, at this point only the printer part works. For enabling the scanner as well, continue with step 8.
8. Do you have a multifunctional PIXMA printer that also contains a scanner? Then first go to the Canon website and download the driver for the scanner part.
Note: you have to select the driver package with the following tag:
(debian Packagearchive)
9. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)
Now copy/paste the following command into the terminal, in order to unzip the downloaded file:
cd Downloads && tar -xvzf ~/Downloads/scangear*deb.tar.gz
Press Enter. With that, you unpack the downloaded file.
10. Now launch your file manager and go to the folder Downloads. In that folder you'll find another folder with a long name, that starts with scangearmp.
Open that folder and click through to its subfolder packages.
11. The next step differs for 64-bit and 32-bit. So check whether your system is 64-bit or 32-bit (item 11).
Double-click first the package called scangearmp-common. For 64-bit select the one whose name ends on amd64.deb and for 32-bit select the one whose name ends on i386.deb.
With that, you install the package.
Then double-click the package scangearmp-(name of your printer series). For 64-bit select the one whose name ends on amd64.deb and for 32-bit select the one whose name ends on i386.deb.
After that, you're ready: the printer should work now, including the scanner part. If the scanner doesn't work with the default scanning application Simple Scan, try launching Canon's own scanning application by means of the terminal command scangearmp (scangearmp should be somewhere in your menu as well, by the way).
Want more tips?
Do you want more tips and tweaks? There's a lot more of them on this website!
For example:
Speed up your Linux Mint!
Clean your Linux Mint safely
Avoid 10 fatal mistakes
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