Making a Canon Pixma MG2220 Print From Linux

This one was so easy once I found the answer, I had time to take a nap after I set it up.  I've still got no idea why the drivers were so hard to find ( I never did find the on the U.S. Canon site ) but they work fine once they're installed.

I had a customer switch from Windows 8 to Linux Mint lately ( and wrote about it at http://www.doopensource.com/new-folks/switched-another-one-to-linux ) but I couldn't make the printer work right away.  It was a Saturday afternoon, I was trying to get home after a hellacious week of dealing with some exasperating folks, so I just tucked both her printers under my arm and told her I'd be back in a couple days with either one or both of them working.

One was a Dell printer.  I don't know the model number, but I understand it's just a Lexmark with a facelift.  In the Linux Printing Department, I guess it gets the grade of a Paperweight.  When I read that ( on message boards — linuxprinting.org is weird these days and I couldn't find the type of list that I used to see when doing printer research ) I unplugged it and started on the Canon.

Turns out that Canon itself makes the drivers for this printer, but when I went to http://www.usa.canon.com I couldn't find them.  The message at the end of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" type of driver search said:

There is no driver for the OS Version you selected. The driver may be included in your OS or you may not need a driver.

However, my OS did NOT come with said driver, and I was in fact in need of a driver.  Some searching on the Ubuntu forums led me to this post about Canon Pixma MG2220 drivers for Linux which then pointed me to Canon's Asian support site.  Quite the little roundabout, aye?

The .deb files here, combined with the commands I found in the Ubuntu forums, got me up and running with this printer in just a few minutes.  After my afformentioned nap, I looked a bit more and found that Canon's Australian site also had drivers and software for Linux.

Printer Driver

Scanner Software

At the very end of each web page is the actual driver link.  You'll end up with a zip file for each that contains an executable install.sh.  Easy Peasy.

Good luck.  If you know anyone that works for Canon, please thank them for providing drivers, even if it was on the other side of the world.  I'd be interested to know why…