I just upgraded from Ubuntu 18.04 to Ubuntu 20.04. I am unable to install the printer driver for my Canon Pixma MX850. I have tried the following:

1. Click on upper-right power icon.
2. Select Settings.
3. Select Printers.
4. In Printers - localhost window. select down arrow next to Add.
5. In New Printer window select Network Printer. That displays Canon-MX850-series_00-00-85-D1-BE-6E (Canon.local).
6. Select Forward.
7. In New Printer window. select gutenprint and Free software.
8. Select Forward.
9. In New Printer window select Select printer from database and Canon.
10. Select Forward.
11. In the New Printer window. there is a Choose Driver/Models list. It does not list MX850.

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3 Answers

After a quite a bit of research, I have finally installed device drivers for my Canon Pixma MX922 all-in-one printer. I'm just thrilled to learn that I will not need to purchase another printer.

There are two methods I found to find and install the device drivers (one for the printer, and one for the scanner). I'll document the easiest one for Ubuntu users in the hopes that we can all learn something from this.

(1) Select the Dash in the lower-left screen, and bring up the Synaptic Package Manager. (2) Select the Reload button to refresh your package lists. (3) Select cnijfilter-mx920series and scangearmp-mx920series. Right-click to mark for installation. (4) Select Apply.

This will download, install, upgrade the selected device drivers for you. Any sufficiently advanced technology, e.g., Ubuntu, is indistinguishable from magic.

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Research confirms widely experienced problem with new install of 20.04. e.g. "Could not start your Printer" despite previously working.

This problem was difficult for me to solve initially as the driver database in Ubuntu printer settings did not include the correct drivers.

Solved for Canon Pixma MX885 on usb.

Download Canon driver from

Note: possibly poor User interface on that web page - it is easy to miss large selection of other printer types in horizontal scrolling blue bar in middle of page. I think that is why I missed this simple solution the first time (doh!).

Download driver and extract.

Go to Ubuntu Settings/ Printers / (then select your printer and click on settings wheel for it). Click on button "search for drivers" and in my case it was found automatically.

Prepare the multiarch-support

1. download the packagewget

2. install the packagesudo dpkg -i multiarch-support_2.27-3ubuntu1.2_amd64.deb

Prepare the libtiff4 (note: please be aware, you have to install libtiff4 not libtiff4-dev)

1. download appropriate libtiff4 from(mine was: )
2. install the packagesudo dpkg -i libtiff4_3.9.7-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb (replace with yours)

Prepare the libpng

1. add the repository:sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxuprising/libpng12
2. update:sudo apt-get update
3. install the libpng12-0sudo apt-get install libpng12-0

Install the MP237 driver

1. download driver from , the file should be a tar.gz format
2. unpack the driver (replace the cnijfilter-mp230series-3.80-1-deb.tar.gz with your downloaded file)tar -zxvf cnijfilter-mp230series-3.80-1-deb.tar.gz
3. go to the directorycd cnijfilter-mp230series-3.80-1-deb.tar.gz
4. run the install filesudo ./install

I found this after some jumping around some articles, and it works for me

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