[cumbria_lug] Canon Printer issue and meeting

[John Patterson]

Hello,
Thanks for your reply.
I have two Canon Printers:

1) i-sensys LBP5000 laser.
2) Pixima MP460 MFP inkjet

LBP5000
I know something about the Open Printing website and their list of 
printers which "work" and "work partly".  In the past, I downloaded the 
Canon CAPT driver from their website and I vaguely understand about 
Cups. Common Universal Printing System, isn't it?  It is now quite a 
time since I last last attempted to get my LBP5000 working.  It is so 
confusing and contradictory.  Canon give detailed and specific 
instructions to install their driver but when it didn't work as 
instructed, I went to the forums and found that about 80% of people who 
did just this could not get their printer working either.  Some of these 
managed to get a test page to print but no 'real' documents would print 
anything.  When a print was requested from an Application, everything 
just sat there sullenly and did absolutely nothing at all.  I couldn't 
even get the test to work.  The first person who claimed to succeed gave 
instructions to ignore everything that Canon said and then gave lines 
and lines of Terminal commands.  Others in the forums insisted only to 
use the Canon Australia website's CAPT driver but couldn't say why.  
Incidentally on the Open Printing website LBP5000 seems to have been 
removed when I looked earlier this evening but I have a printout from it 
on file.

Back then I was a very new, newbie, and didn't understand how to open a 
terminal.  I'm a little bolder now but having found the Terminal in 
Ubuntu 9, is it in different place in 10.4?  I didn't particularly want 
to upgrade from 9 to 10.4 but as the Upgrade Manager wanted to upgrade, 
generally, I let it which produced 10.4.

Recently, I have found a personal website (Radu Cotescue) which purports 
to know how to gain success.
http://radu.cotescu.com/2010/03/20/how-to-install-canon-lbp-printers-in-ubuntu/ 
et seq
These instructions quite complicated for a newbie so I printed using 
XP/Firefox and filed it.

Its all very different from popping a CD or DVD into the drive and 
sitting back as in Windows.

MP460
I couldn't find anything in the Linux forums except the general advice 
that MFPs are bad news.  A few hardy soles have succeeded in partly 
getting some printing function on some makes and models of MFP but for 
most its a no-go area.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACH
I would reluctantly be willing to buy a laser printer that is known to 
"work".  However, it seems that waiting until a particular printer 
appears in the Open Printing website as one which "works", that printer 
is usually no longer for sale having been superseded by a "better", 
"later", "upgraded" model.  A model that may "works" or may "works 
partly" or doesn't work at all.  This jaded view is because I nearly 
bought an HP 1600 model which I was supposedly 'reliably' informed was 
produced in the same far-eastern factory and was identically to the 
LBP5000 except for cosmetic changes.  On the Open Printing website this 
was only rated as "works mainly" despite the general belief that HP are 
generally okay on Linux.

Sorry for the rant.  As you can see, I'm a tad frustrated.

Thank you so very much for your interest.  I will be pleased to try 
anything that you suggest.

John Patterson
Penrith

BTW the Amiga wasn't mine. It was a good friend (no longer living) who 
was attempting to do video editing using various types of Amiga but to 
him, none were powerful enough for the job.  At that time he ran a small 
(retirement) business hiring out (analogue) camcorders for weddings and 
other special events (DIY style).  He wanted to offer video titling 
services to the professional video industry.  He did this but not on an 
Amiga. He gradually moved on to on multi-thousand £ professional 
equipment.  Before he died he was an agent, selling this professional 
kit very successfully. He was about 70 when he started all this as a 
retirement business just to keep him interested after being a house 
builder.  His interest in photo started as an aerial photographer in the 
RAF before his house building began.
I am little embarresed to tell that I was using a Commodore 64 and later 
a Commodore 128 before moving to my first PC, an Elonex 386.

Joachim Jahn wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> It is nice to hear that somebody used an Amiga before and is now a 
> member of
> the LUG in Cumbria. I am kind of new to Linux and have just recently 
> moved over
> completely from XP to Ubuntu 10. I do love the system very much but 
> have had
> a few issues with the printer like you.
>
> Can you please let me know what printer you are using and how it is 
> connected to
> your computer. I had to fix something called Cups in Ubuntu to 
> correctly recognise
> the printer.
>
> With regards to the meeting - I think it would be fun and I would love 
> to attend
> when you have a date set. Maybe somebody could set a little agenda to 
> let people
> know what is planned rather than just get together.
>
> Best Regards
>
>
>
> */Joachim Jahn/*
>
>
>
>
>
>
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