I recently bought a new wireless printer/scanner combo.

Configuring the printing is normally fairly easy but the scanner was a little more difficult. After trying to use the standard sane based drivers and utilities, I had to fall back to the manufacturer and thankfully they support linux 🙂

First thing was to download the driver for Ubuntu/Debian from http://www.canon-printerdrivers.com/2015/02/canon-pixma-mg2900-driver-download.html – Look for ScanGear or use this direct download link http://gdlp01.c-wss.com/gds/1/0100006271/01/scangearmp2-3.00-1-deb.tar.gz

Once downloaded, drop to a shell and locate the downloaded file and unpack and install with :

$> tar xf scangearmp2-3.00-1-deb.tar.gz
$> cd scangearmp2-3.00-1-deb/
$> sudo ./install.sh

One of the things I noticed right off the bat was Canon left out the .desktop file to add this to your distro’s desktop menus.  That’s OKAY, download this file (right click and “save as”) and save it to your .local/share/applications/ directory :  scangearmp2.desktop

You should find the short cut under the Graphics category on your menus.