Q I print photographs as an amateur and for that purpose purchased a Canon i865 printer. I've had it a year and until now it was more than satisfactory for my needs (as a Windows user). Three months ago I moved my home computer to Kubuntu, which is very user friendly. Now I feel I can try other distros. However, I cannot get my printer to work from Linux. There seem to be no drivers available for this (and many other Canon printers). All my printing is done through my dual-booted Windows. To make the move to Linux complete I need to be able to print. I have tried various methods to print, setting up a generic printer, various Canon drivers that are available etc. Nothing works. I did get two pieces of 'advice' from a forum I tried: changing my printer and buying a driver from a firm called TurboPrint.
Are these the only solutions?
A Canon printers are notoriously poorly supported in Linux (unlike Canon scanners and cameras - I wouldn't part with either of mine) but there is a driver that is reported to give excellent results with this printer and the good news is that you probably have it installed already. When configuring your printer, select Canon BJC-8200 as the printer type -the BJC 8200 driver works with the Canon i865 up to the printer's maximum resolution. There are actually two drivers for the BJC-8200: one included with CUPS (the standard print system) and the other in the gimp-print package.
If you have Gimp-Print (or Gutenprint, as the latest versions are called) installed you will be given a choice of the two drivers; you should try each of them to see which works best for your needs. Installing the printer can be done from your distro's configuration programs, such as Yast in SUSE, or through a web browser. Point your browser to http://localhost:631, click on the Add Printer button and answer the questions. Once you have set up the printer with one of the drivers, you can click on the Printers tab and click on Modify Printer' when you wish to try the other driver. TurboPrint is a commercial set of printer drivers that supports more printers than CUPS or Gutenprint (the company is Zedonet GmbH). Being commercial means it can buy developer kits from the printer manufacturers. The quality is excellent and you can download a demo version from www.turboprint.de/english.html. The demo adds a small TurboPrint logo to prints made at the highest quality, but this doesn't stop you from gauging the quality yourself to decide whether it is worth spending some money on the full version.