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!