Using a Brother MFC-J450DW All-In-One with Ubuntu

Are you thinking about buying a Brother MFC-J450DW Wireless Office All-In-One Printer/Scanner/Copier/Fax Machine and wondering if it will work with your Ubuntu computer? The answer is YES! Brother actually includes Linux on their Supported OS Page.  I was able to get things working on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr".

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Brother Software Installation

Driver Downloads

The CD provided with the printer contains Drivers, Utilities, and Users Manuals, but only for Windows and Macintosh computers.  To get the Linux Drivers, you must visit the MFC-J450DW Downloads Page.  Select Linux as the OS and Linux (deb) as the OS Version or go directly to this page.  Follow directions to download and install the Driver Install Tool.

From a terminal:

gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-*.gz
sudo su -
bash linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-* MFC-J450DW
Will you specify the DeviceURI? Y, 14 (Auto)

After all this, you should be able to see your new printer:

System Settings -> Printers -> MFCJ450DW

You should also be able to scan with the application Simple Scan which comes with Ubuntu.

No Brother Software Installation

If you would rather not install any software on your computer whatsoever, the MFC-J450DW makes this possible.  I actually prefer this because it makes it easy to print and scan to and from any device you might have including Macs and iOS devices.

Google Cloud Print

Another option is to setup Google Cloud Print which lets you print from any device via your Google Account.  Brother's Google Cloud Print Instruction Page just tells you to find the right manual for your model.  If you visit the Brother MFC-J450DW Manuals Page, you will see the Brother Google Cloud Print Guide Page which let's you download the actual Brother Google Cloud Print Guide [PDF].  To save time, just make sure you have a Google Account and then go directly to your printer's admin web interface which is accessible via a web browser at http://[PRINTER_IP_ADDRESS]/ where PRINTER_IP_ADDRESS is the address of your printer on the local network.  I was able to obtain this IP address by looking at my router's list of connected clients.  You can also find out via the printer's control panel by selecting Menu -> Network -> WLAN -> TCP/IP -> IP Address.

The printer's Google Cloud Print admin page, at http://[PRINTER_IP_ADDRESS]/net/net/gcp.html?pageid=1084, only let's you associate the printer with one Google account.  However Google let's you share the printer with other people very easily.

Scan to the Web

Another option for scanning is to use Brother Web Connect.  Instructions can be found at the Brother Web Connect Page which lets you download the Brother Web Connect Guide [PDF].  I found it very easy to setup Web Connect for Google Drive and Dropbox.  Other options available that I haven't tried yet are Picassa, Flickr, Facebook, Evernote, Onedrive, and Box.  After you get it setup, you simply use the printer's control panel with WEB -> [Service] -> [Configured Service].  After scanning, the file will show up in your Configured Service in a folder called From_BrotherDevice.  So easy!

Please comment if you have any problems or other tips for people trying to get the Brother MFC-J450DW (or similar printer) working with Ubuntu.

Using a Canon Pixma MX882 All-In-One with Ubuntu 10.10

Are you thinking about buying a Canon Pixma MX882 Wireless Office All-In-One Printer and wondering if it will work with your Ubuntu computer?  Although Canon does not make this clear in any way, the answer is YES!

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Instead of using software that comes on a CD with the printer, you'll have to download and install drivers yourself.  They are not easy to find if you live in the US since they're only available on European and Asian Canon websites.  I'll tell you how to download and install them.

Printing

Finding and installing the drivers

1. Visit the Linux IJ Printer Driver page on the Canon Europe web site.
2. Click the Linux IJ Printer Driver MX880 series.tar link in the Downloads section to download the 7299.5 kb tarball.
3. Inside the tarball, find and unpack cnijfilter-mx880series-3.50-1-deb.tar.gz.
4. Inside the resulting cnijfilter-mx880series-3.50-1-deb/packages directory, locate and double click cnijfilter-common_3.50-1_i386.deb and  cnijfilter-mx880series_3.50-1_i386.deb in that order.  Ubuntu will guide you through the installation. 

Note: The guide that came with this driver asks you to run the install.sh program, but it didn't work for me.  When I ran it, I got an error: An error occurred. The package management system cannot be identified.

Adding the printer

1. From Ubuntu's menu, select: System,  Administration, then Printing.
2. From Printing window that opens, select Add.
3. After a few seconds,  you should see a Canon MX880 printer show up under Network Printer.
4. Select it and click Forward.
5. Finish entering your printer Name, Description, and Location.

Scanning

Finding and installing the drivers

1. Visit the Linux IJ Scanner Driver page on the Canon Europe web site.
2. Click the Linux IJ Scanner Driver MX880 series.tar link in the Downloads section to download the 3072 kb tarball.
3. Inside the tarball, find and unpack scangearmp-mx880series-1.70-1-deb.tar.gz.
4. Inside the resulting scangearmp-mx880series-1.70-1-deb/packages directory, locate and double click scangearmp-common_1.70-1_i386.deb and  scangearmp-mx880series_1.70-1_i386.deb in that order.  Ubuntu will guide you through the installation. 

Note: The guide that came with this driver asks you to run the install.sh program, but it didn't work for me.  When I ran it, I got an error: An error occurred. The package management system cannot be identified.

Scan Gear MP

With the drivers, an app called Scan Gear MP is also installed.  This app serves as an interface to your scanner and has a Basic Mode:

And an Advanced Mode:

You can launch the app from the terminal by typing scangearmp and it is also available within Gimp by selecting File, Create, Scan Gear MP...


I have not yet figure out a way to use the scanner via XSane.  I'd love to hear comments about whether this is possible and how to do it.  Without XSane support, I can't use familiar programs such as SimpleScan and gscan2pdf.

VueScan

One more thing to mention.  Before I figured out Canon made drivers for this scanner, I came across a program called VueScan which claimed to support MX880 series printers on Linux via the network without installing any drivers at all.  It took seconds to download, launch, and see that this program could communicate with my MX882 scanner with ease!  It may be worth the $79.95 if you can't get Canon's drivers to work.

Happy printing, scanning, copying, and faxing!

SCaLE 6x 2008 - Linux in LA

I attended the 6th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 6x) this weekend at the Westin hotel on Century Blvd near LAX. It was my second year in a row. This year again, I used a promo code mentioned in a podcast ad which brought the registration fee down to only 30-something bucks, a really great price.

The first thing I noticed this year was that the attendance seemed a lot higher, maybe even double what it was last year. The Jono Bacon keynote on Saturday morning was packed and since I got there a little late, I was told to go to the overflow room. Unfortunately there were some technical problems in the overflow room and the video shut off before the presentation was over so I missed the end of it.

The exhibit floor was again full of vendors related to Linux, Linux distros, networking and monitoring tools, and open source software in general. This year I enjoyed visiting the booths of Foresight Linux, Splunk, and LinuxFund. I got some decent swag like a red hat (baseball cap) from RedHat, a water bottle from Sun Microsystems, and a purple stuffed octopus from Plain Black. The latter I gave to my 4-month-old son.

I attended the following sessions this year:

• PostgreSQL 8.3: Latest Features of the Most Advanced Database - Josh Berkus
• GNOME: Ten Years of Freedom - Ken VanDine
• GIMP Demystified - Akkana Peck
• Linux Entertain Me! - Cecil Watson
• The Ubuntu Desktop: Bling for Usability - Ted Gould

The conference had a "try it" room where various tutorials were offered every hour. I wish I could have attended one of the sessions on Inkscape, but I found out about it too late.

Overall, I had a great time and will definitely attend again next year if I can. I love the fact that the conference is low-cost, close by, and on the weekend so I don't have to get permission at work to attend.

Facebook Has No Love for Linux

ABC News and Facebook recently added the US Politics application which tracks what's happening right now in the world of politics. As the 2008 presentational race is heating up, there are daily polls for capturing the views of Facebook users.

On my computer and web browser (Firefox 2 on Ubuntu Linux), the user interface for these polls is so messed up that I cannot vote at all. Determined to participate in the polls, I emailed Facebook support to let them know that they needed to fix the application for Linux users. This was their response:

Hi Ken,

Unfortunately, Facebook is not meant to work with Linux. Please switch to a different operating system for best results on this website. Let me know if you have any questions, and I'd be happy to help.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Maude
User Operations
Facebook

This is pathetic for a website like Facebook that would like to, and probably will, sign up everyone in the world eventually. There are millions of Linux users that they are leaving out by having this policy. Also, support for Linux wouldn't be that difficult to achieve. In fact, I have been using Facebook heavily on Linux for the past few months and this has been the very first problem I've experienced.

I wrote another email to Facebook urging them to support Linux users. If you care about the future of Facebook and other large web sites working well on Linux operating systems, I urge you to do the same.

Audio CD Creation on Ubuntu

My wife asked me to make a compilation of R.E.M. songs for her father and burn them to a CD that he could play at home or in his car. Believe it or not, I have never tried to make an audio CD before. I hardly knew where to start.

The first thing I checked was what programs came with Ubuntu that might help me. In the Applications --> Sound & Video menu, I found Sound Juicer CD Extractor and Serpentine Audio CD Creator.

Sound Juicer pops up when I put an audio CD in my computer. It was very easy to see how to rip the music off the CD, but I didn't know what format I should rip it in so that it could be burned onto a CD-R and played in a normal CD player. I figured that if I created MP3 or OGG files, only special, modern CD players could read the data. After some Googling, I found that I was right - I would need to rip the music as .wav (WAVE) files if I wanted to support normal CD players.

Unfortunately, Sound Juicer did not contain a gstreamer audio profile for the lossless .wav format. I had to add one using these instructions. After that, I was able to easily rip music into the .wav format and then setup a playlist of music to burn onto a CD using Serpentine. With Serpentine, it was as easy as opening the audio files, ordering them, and clicking one button to burn them to a CD. Serpentine also kept track of the time taken up by the playlist, letting me know how much more room was left on the CD. Easy as pie.

The resulting CD, however, was not perfect. It plays fine on Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP, and in my new car CD player, but it fails to play in my portable Sony CD player and an old Toshiba DVD player.

I assume there is something special about newer CD players and computers that give them the capability to play an audio CD created on a computer, but I have no idea what it is. I am wondering if there was some different CD-R type or some way I could have burned the music so that it would play on the oldest of CD players. If you know anything about this, please share.

Easy Upgrade to Ubuntu Feisty Fawn

Last Thursday, April 19, Ubuntu released its latest version, 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). The announcement is here. I decided to wait a few days before upgrading my operating system at home from 6.10 (Edgy Eft) to 7.04 just in case there were any bugs in the upgrade process that would get fixed immediately after the release. Even though a fair amount of people were reporting various problems with the upgrade process on the Ubuntu Forums, I decided to give it a go.

I didn't customize my installation very much so I figured the upgrade process had a good chance of succeeding. Ubuntu's upgrade instructions recommend upgrading via the network, but since many people were reporting that the upgrade servers were getting hammered due to the recent release, I decided to upgrade using the "Alternate CD". I downloaded the ISO using Azureus, my favorite BitTorrent client. It took a while to download, so I just let it go overnight. Then I burned it to a CD and popped it it. Ubuntu immediately popped up a window asking me if I wanted to upgrade to 7.04. I clicked "Upgrade", followed the instructions, and everything went smoothly! In less than an hour later, I was fully upgraded to Feisty Fawn.

I haven't really noticed any major differences between Edgy and Feisty yet other than the fact that the "Hibernate" feature of my computer is working now and it never worked with Edgy. That is pretty exciting for me actually, since I had been completely shutting down the computer before, and now I can let it go to sleep. I think it works now because Feisty has a new version of the Kernel, 2.6.20, which probably contains recently added support for newer hardware. The rest of the new features in Feisty are listed here. There are also two new games included with Feisty: Sudoku and Chess.

I can't decide whether or not to try the upgrade at work. I can't afford any downtime at work, so if it doesn't go as smoothly, I would be screwed. I will probably wait until things at work slow down a bit, and then try the upgrade on a Friday. That way, if I end up having to reinstall, I can do it over the weekend.

Novell Linux, Mac, PC

A friend at work pointed out these YouTube videos to me a few days ago.

The world could use more Linux users like her :)

I wish Novell would put these on TV!

Vibez Audio Player Supports Linux

The most recent episode (#29) of the Fresh Ubuntu podcast introduced me to the Vibez MP3 Player which supports the Linux operating system as well as the open Ogg Vorbis audio format.

I kind of wish I had one of these instead of my iPod Nano. Use of the iPod requires iTunes which doesn't run on Linux. Also, the iPod won't play music in the ogg vorbis format. The day my iPod stops working, I will probably buy one of these Vibez players - unless, of course, there are better alternatives for Linux by then.

You can buy the Vibez, which currently comes in 8 GB and 12 GB models, at Amazon.com. Detailed tech specs are available at TrekStor.

SCaLE 5x 2007 - Linux in LA

I attended the 5th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 5x) this weekend at the Westin hotel on Century Blvd near LAX. It was the first Linux conference I'd ever been to. I heard about it on several of the Linux podcasts I listen to. They were offering a discount with a promo code mentioned in the podcast ad. It only ended up costing me 30-something bucks to attend - not a bad price.

Overall the conference was pretty good. There were a lot of good presentations and an exhibit floor with vendors and projects represented. I attended the following sessions:

• How to Heard Cats and Influence People - Jono Bacon
• Open Source Business Applications - David Uhlman
• The State of Linux Systems Management - Simon Bennett
• Samba For Beginners - Mike Maki
• Wireless Networking for Beginners - Dennis Rax
• Open Source Licenses, a Review with Corner Cases - Chris Dibona
• Web Applications: What is your Backup/Recovery Plan? - Paddy Sreenivasan

I also attended the following BOFs:

• Building a Linux Home Entertainment System - Cecil Waton
• Ubuntu - Jono Bacon

The conference had en email room where there were several computers set up, all running Linux. The computers and monitors were very stylish. They were made by the company Shuttle. Each of them had an instance of Knoppix running.

I love that Los Angeles has a Linux conference. I am surprised I hadn't heard of it until this year. I will probably go every year if I can.

Intel to nVidia

My Dell Dimension 9200c came with a G965 chipset and an Intel GMA X3000 on-board video chip. After installing Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft), I was never able to set the resolution to 1680 x 1050 which is the proper setting for my Dell 2007WFP monitor. I posted a couple of times (1, 2) to the Ubuntu Forums, but no one was able to help me.

I thought I would wait it out until the i810 driver or some other Linux driver supported the X3000 properly. I was hoping that I'd have better luck with Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn). I tried both the Herd-1 and Herd-2 pre-releases of Feisty and still had no luck. I was still stuck at 1280 x 1024.

Finally, I got sick of looking at the distorted images (stretched horizontally) and decided to get another video card to put in my computer's empty PCI Express x16 slot. A Dell tech support guy told me that if I pop in a new video card, the on-board chip would automatically shut off. I figured I would buy an nVidia-based card because nVidia drivers are known to work well on Linux.

After a lot of research online, I went to buy an eVGA GeForce 7300 GS at Circuit City. To my dismay, when I attempted to install it, it didn't fit! I have one of those mini computer chassis, and I learned that I needed a half height (sometimes called low profile) video card. While researching, I only knew to look for a PCI Express x16 card - I didn't know they came in more than one height.

So I returned the eVGA card to Circuit City and began to research cards again, looking for low profile PCI Express cards. I couldn't find a single store in my area that sold one. Finally, I found one on Amazon.com: the Geforce 7300GS 256MB DDR2 Pcie. I ordered this along with a Low Profile Bracket Kit which had to be purchased separately.

This video card installed successfully! I was then able to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg which reconfigured my xorg.conf with the open source nv driver. I changed this to the proprietary nVidia driver using these instructions. After this, everything worked! My resolution went to 1680 x 1050, I could run glxgears, and games like Second Life looked soooooooooooo much better.

The only drawback is that the new video card has its own fan which is annoyingly loud. Because of this, I am thinking about moving my computer into a cabinet or under the desk.

No More TUX

I am sad to read the news that TUX Magazine (self-described as the first and only magazine for the new Linux user) did not survive. Apparently Issue 20 was their last issue ever. They ran into financial trouble. I guess it was to be expected since their readership consisted mostly of people that want software and everything related to it to be free.

Although the writing in TUX was not top-notch, I enjoyed reading it because they catered to new Linux users like myself and introduced a lot of useful Linux software. Also their PDF landscape format made it really easy to read online. Back issues 1-20 covering March 2005 until now are still available for download. I recommend checking them out while they are still relatively relevant. Farewell TUX!