I tried Antix 7.5, and posted on that forum about my initial problems, so I deleted that and installed Antix 8 public test. Still needed to go to the console and edit xorg.conf to get screen resolution that my monitor is comfortable with, but that is minor.

What is frustrating is trying to get my printer going. It's a Canon i965, and I can download a driver for it from a repo at Kyoto university. All went well, and I used the Control Centre to install the printer, all seems to be ok. Opened Abiword and typed a couple of lines, and went to print it. Printer is on the list, so select that, and click print.

Nothing happens. Go to cups error log, and filter pstocanonbj has stopped, status 1,"problem with filter". Now here is where things got REALLY, REALLY frustrating. I can't find any means of searching for files that works, where I put in part of the file name."Find" in console denies that the file exists, the search function in pcmanfm finds nothing, and, if I remember right, there was another finder that also produced no result. But using pcmanfm to navigate by instinct to where I expect the file to be- there it is!

So I'm looking for the cups config file to set logging to debug. How do I find it, assuming that I can't remember from other distros where it is?

Thanks... Gerry

Try installing the printing apps in the meta-install package
Office hp printing (it will drag in some hp stuff though) or install these apps.

cups-pdf
cupsys-client
cupsys-driver-gutenprint
gs-gpl
lpr
magicfilter
gv
xprint-utils

Then try configuring via cups online at localhost 631

========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://localhost:631/"
linktext was:"http://localhost:631/"
====================================
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false

In a terminal as root run updatedb. Once it is complete then run"locate filename" or mlocate file name. I forget which one is installed.

@eriefisher- thanks. I found Catfish, and discovered that it does what I want in finding files.

@Anticapitalista- I think you're guessing! My printer works fine on Puppy and Debian, so I'm comparing what each system has. One thing I've found is that if you have cups installed, then lpr is replaced by a symlink to a binary called lpr-cups. Also lp > lp-cups, lpq > lpq-cups, lprm > lprm-cups..... Where lpr-cups etc come from I can't find out! (Yet.)

The problem may be deeper than that though, as I can't print the cups test page either.

I'm no developer, but I'll keep going.

Gerry

Checked Debian- it does have the lpr etc binaries. I think I've landed in a situation that Antix is not designed for: using a printer where the driver is downloaded from a non-standard repository, rather than being built-in or supplied by Gutenprint.

My printer is a Canon i965. Only the latest Gutenprint library has a driver for it, but that prints grey rather than black, so the Canon driver, which was only ever available in Japan, and is no longer, is the one to use. I get it from:


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/"
linktext was:"http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/"
====================================
" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false

where Mr Takushi has drivers for a number of Canon and Epson printers. So if you have a developer with one of those printers- there's a job for him!!

I'll keep on with it, but it's a low priority- as I said, Puppy and Debian work ok.

Regards.... Gerry

Giving up on Antix is your choice, but there are solutions for this.
The first for me would be to see what packages are associated in detail on your other distro. The second would be to simply copy over those items that you need directly from the other distro if it is on the same box.
When you say

"the driver is downloaded from a non-standard repository, rather than being built-in or supplied by Gutenprint."

, What repository are you referring to? and, why can you not use the same repository? It is debian no? It should work just fine for something like your problem I would think.
But maybe there's more here that I am not aware of. Cannons have really bad support. I finally went out and got a hp after much struggle, and am glad, very glad, I did.

The repository is the one above, at Kyoto University.

Yes, I am already copying files across, without success yet.

Gerry