My experience with printers is that of all the peripherals, regardless of OS, they are the trickiest to install, configure, and use. So I'm expecting a battle here.
What I have is a Canon Pixus iP3100. It's a Japanese model, but it's the same model as the US Canon Pixma iP3000, just a different name.
First, I plugged in the USB cable. CentOS seemed to detect it, and gave me a list of options. Neither the US model number nor Japanese model number was there, so I selected "Canon (unknown)". It spent a while installing, and then finished without any message to say for sure if it had installed successfully. I tried to print from a number of application, but nothing happened. Just nothing. No error messages, no printer noises, nothing.
So, I figured the driver didn't take hold.
I looked around the net, and first I cam across "Turboprint for Linux". At first it seemed promising. But my first snag was that after installing the RPM, I didn't seem to have any printer configuration dialogues or anything. I went on the net to see about a manual, and *then* I discovered that in the free, consumer use version, they stamp a logo onto whatever you print. I was a little annoyed that they didn't make that really clear up front, they just tell you that commercial users must pay and consumers can use for free.
Anyway, I decided to look for different alternatives. I came across a web site that said that my printer model could work under a different Canon driver: http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/canon-list/2004q4/001797.html
But, and here's the heart of my question, I can't find any place to make changes to my printer configuration. According to some web sites I looked at, I should have a printer configuration application in my menu, under "Preferences". But all I have is a "printer settings" application which, despite the promising name, doesn't have any menu options at all for configuring the printer or it's drivers. It looks more like a print spool manager for when you have print jobs lined up.
Where/how do I configure my printer and try alternate drivers?
Dave