Q&A Ubuntu contributor Mike Basinger

Upgrade Advice

Question: I saw that Ubuntu 13.10 will be released soon, and I wonder if it is a good idea for me to upgrade to it.

Steve

Answer: Steve, The new version of Ubuntu 13.10 [1] provides a much-improved Unity experience. It allows you to search hundreds of different online sources directly from the Dash, add or remove scopes from the Dash to customize your experience, and browse messages from your social networks with the new Friends scope. It also improves support for LibreOffice 4.0, now with new, modern presentation templates, and includes built-in support for Ubuntu's integrated menu bar.

As for upgrading, it would be a fine for a normal day-to-day user of Ubuntu to make the leap to Ubuntu 13.10. Unity is really maturing, and I have not had any problems with it. If you want to install it on a server, be aware that Ubuntu 13.10 is only supported for 18 months. I would wait until Ubuntu 14.04 before upgrading a production server that your work may depend on.

Driver Needed

Question: My name is Patricia and this is my problem: Some months ago, I bought a Canon MX435 printer and installed it on my Ubuntu laptop. As it doesn't have a CD player, I did it via Wi-Fi and I didn't have any problems.

But, then I updated Ubuntu to its newest version and the printer stopped working. When I went to reinstall it, I couldn't see the controllers anymore.

Can you help me solve this problem?

Answer: Patricia, You need to download a driver from the Canon website [2]. A download link at the bottom of this website will download a tar.gz file. You will want to extract the .tar.gz file first. Double-click the downloaded file (cnijfilter-mx430series-3.70-1-deb.tar.gz at the time of writing) and select Extract.

After you extract the contents of the archive, open a terminal and navigate to the extracted directory. You will need to locate and run the install.sh shell script with superuser credentials:

sudo install.sh

This step should install the needed driver. Reboot your PC, and you should be able to install the printer normally.