#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems install
#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems drivers
#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems driver
#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems Patch
#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems portable

Some patches install themselves automatically, either as rpm or deb files, or do so by automated installation via yum or apt-get. There are different kinds of patches for Linux.

#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems driver

Even without adding this patch, you can still install the driver via CUPS, and you'll get extended paper-type choices and better quality photo images than what you'll get from the BJC-7004 built into your Linux distro.

#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems Patch

To get full functionality, I discovered, you must patch the PPD (Postscript Printer Definition) file to add support for quality levels and different levels of resolution. You needn't bother with the documentation files unless you read Japanese! For a Canon iP3000, download the pixusip3100 RPMs for the last two the first one is common to all supported PIXMA printers.

If you have a Canon iP4000, download these. The following files are the Canon Japan driver for the Canon iP4000 printer:ī To download and install the RPMs for my Canon printer, I went to. But if you're using a Fedora-Red Hat or other RPM-based distro, you'll need to know more.įirst, as I discovered, you will need to install the driver RPMs (RPM Package Managers).

If you are using a Debian-based distribution, go to the German translation above, and good luck. As a result, much of the original instructions-for example, 'convert RPM to DEB, add library symlinks, and remove a module'-are simply irrelevant to Fedora Core users and most others who use. The post turned out to be a how-to for a Debian distribution. Like most machine translations, it was good enough, but not great. Since I don't read German, my next task was to obtain an English translation, which I got here. I followed the links back to the German original posting. I eventually found a reference on a mailing list via Google. But I kept going anyway, knowing that perseverance can pay off. I found a posting that gave a long list of functions my printer won't support if one installs the driver the poster suggests. ppd.gz files unless your printer has an internal Postscript interpreter, which very few consumer-price printers have.) rpm (.deb if you use a Debian-derived distro) for driver installers. Next, I decided to look for pointers to sites with installable drivers. Since I print photos, I clearly needed a better driver. Shown below is an A-B comparison of the BJC driver vs. Also, while the driver looks fine printing both the CUPS test image and sample text, its output on photo images is gray and muddy, even compared with what my old Lexmark printed on plain paper. While this driver works, it provides print quality of only 300 to 600 dpi (600x1200 is not usable), and the only choices in paper types are plain, bond and transparency film. In the case of the Canon iP3000, the first recommendation I saw said to use the BJC-7004 driver. In general, however, external Web search via Google works better than trying to navigate within the site. You might try the vendor-specific Web forum or mailing lists. I found that blog postings at various Linux sites contain many useful-and some useless-ideas.

By doing this, I got to the blog and other online posts referred to below. I searched on the keywords Canon iP3000 Linux. That still didn't help! So my next step was to Google the printer model and Linux. So I next tried the the LinuxPrinting Canon vendor FAQ. My next step was to go to and look up the printer by vendor, via the printer database. That turned out to be the case for my Canon printer. Alternatively, the vendor may have a GPL'd driver that simply never made it to. That happens when a vendor has a driver it's unwilling to publish under the GPL (General Public License-freeware license under specific terms and conditions), which would generally keep the driver off.

#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems drivers

Linux drivers frequently don&'t make it to the Linux printing database. Because Linux drivers are frequently in out-of-the-way places on a vendor site, searching under Linux on the site&'s internal search engine sometimes works.

#Canon pixma ip3000 printer problems portable

Next I discovered that the matching print driver isn't built into the CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) portable printing layer, so I checked the Canon site again and did some more digging. This oversight seems to be fairly representative:, a site that provides resources for printing with open-source systems, keeps a vendor scorecard on which it calls Canon 'average.' In other words, the Linux drivers do exist for this printer, but they're hard to find. But I was unable to find a Linux driver for the iP3000 at the Canon USA site. I wanted to use the Canon iP3000 photo printer, part of the company's PIXMA printer series.