Alas, Poor Canon, I Barely Knew Ye

Here's a sad little note I wrote to Canon USA owing to their terrible Linux/BSD support policy. I can't fault a company for not providing drivers to Linux (since it's an admittedly small portion of the population). But for Canon to rebuff repeated developer requests for documentation on their scanner API is very dissappointing.

Here's a note I wrote to Canon describing my decision to return the scanner:

I recently purchased a Canon 5000F scanner, based on the high quality of my Canon camera products, and the specifications found on the product literature.

It was not until I had taken the unit home and attempted to connect it to my Linux system that I realized you did not provide Linux support. These days, most vendors do provide this support, or at least documentation for the scanner interface so that support can be added to an existing driver framework. My web inquiries found that Canon was not making documentation of the driver interface available, and so that the only way this scanner would be supported would be through a reverse-engineering effort.

Regretfully, I had to return the unit and exchange it for an EPSON, which does provide full support.

I realize that Windows and Mac OS are far and away the most common operating systems, and that it makes good business sense to prioritize your product support accordingly. However, the lack of driver support (or documentation) makes your products effectively worthless for my use.

Based on this experience, I will probably not be purchasing a Canon digital camera (which had been my next planned purchase). This is unfortunate, because I have found your 35mm camera optics to be superior, but in the digital arena I must stay compatible with the rest of my system configuration.