Canon iP90 drivers don't seem to work

Ubuntu 20.04.2, Any desktop

Over the last couple months, whenever there's a new update to software, I go ahead and install it and usually afterwards something no longer works. A few weeks ago, my Canon Pixma MG2900 series multifunction printer stopped working. Nothing I've done to try to restore it has worked. When I print to it, it acts like the document with any type of extension just sits there, 'Pending'. I've repeatedly checked settings and nothing I've tried makes the document print. A couple weeks ago, it would print ONLY if it was a PDF, but even that has stopped working now. And YES, I have the latest CUPS installed...or at least I think I do. All my printers have 'State - Enabled'. All of them show 'Test Page' available when it's selected as the default printer.

But here's the strange thing with the Canon iP90 I recently attached to the computer...if I click on 'Test Page' it will output 13 blank pages. WTH? Every time, 13 blank pages is the test page? That can't be right.

Anyone have any idea how to stop this repeated failure of Canon printers just not printing after an upgrade? Someone should have some idea of why practically every update to the software (served by Ubuntu) breaks the printers!!??

HELP!!

Update: 16Jun21 - Still wondering if there is a way to get this iP90 Canon printer to print in Ubuntu 20.04. Works fine in Win10.

In Ubuntu 20.04.2, Installed the CUPS and set it up, several times, and it always prints multiple blank pages with a tiny row of smudges along the top of the page. CUPS even shows the iP90 printer when I install it, so someone attempted to write a FOSS driver for it at one time, but that's all I know about it. Dunno who codes those drivers so can't contact anyone, or group.

Edit: Feb. 2022 Gave up on the Gutenprint iP90 driver and tried Turboprint for the free eval month. Worked great, really liked everything about it except the $45 USD price with no support after 6 months. Really seems too much for a printer driver in my mind. So then I tried the driver for iP110 again. Back when I'd tried it shortly after picking up the printer, it didn't work, recently, I found that it now works as a B&W printer driver for the iP90. The Test page below shows "Printer: Canon-iP90-iP110".

But unfortunately, the driver seems to smear the any color printing residing on the page. Here's a picture...note that the faint printing in the background is bleedtrough from the back side. The B&W printing is fine, but the color printing smears horizontally as you can see.

Any ideas of how to proceed? Is there any hope that Gutenprint would do something about this problem? Is there a way to color print from TERM?

Thanks.

Solution 1:

I suggest you try printing after uninstalling all of the previous drivers you've installed, because as it says here Support|iP90|Drivers after selecting Linux 64:

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.

wich means that the printer is very likely to work without any driver in need. I used to have a similar problem on my Ubuntu machine with a Canon G series but it actually ended up working without a driver.

Otherwise the (not so comfortable) solution of running Windows on VirtualBox on your Ubuntu machine is still a valid option, you can share a folder between the host machine and the guest one to exchange "to print" files as well as "scanned" files.