Skip to Content

Which scanner for Ubuntu?

Tue, 04/13/2010 - 14:28 — augustin
Project:Linux hardware
Component:Documentation
Category:support request
Priority:normal
Assigned:Unassigned
Status:closed
Project wiki:Hardware
Related pages:#18: Scanners
Description

I want to buy a scanner. I never owned one. Some scanners work well with linux, others don't.
Let's see what info I can find.

Comments

#1

augustin - 04/13/2010 - 14:32
Related pages:+18: Scanners

wiki.

#2

augustin - 04/13/2010 - 15:01

#21: Most Linux friendly scanner manufacturers?

#3

augustin - 04/13/2010 - 15:20

http://www.hawkee.com/shop/review/424404/

Works in Ubuntu Linux with downloaded driver
Epson Perfection V30 Color Scanner

I was looking for an inexpensive Linux-compatible flatbed scanner, and after a fair amount of research I picked this one and am quite pleased. It doesn't work out of the box in Linux, but if you do a Google search for "avasys linux scanner driver", you'll find the place where the driver can be downloaded. The driver is accompanied by a scan utility called iscan, which offers basic features, but you can also use the much more powerful xsane, which should be available for any Linux distribution. The results look fine in both color and greyscale. I've been experimenting with scanning a book at 300 dpi, and feeding the output into the tesseract OCR program, and the error rate is surprisingly low. I've only had the scanner a couple of days so can't comment on its longevity, but so far it's good.

yes, but...:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1245019

#4

augustin - 04/13/2010 - 15:20

Looking to buy a scanner...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1328861

#5

augustin - 04/13/2010 - 15:22

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8634134&postcount=3

I'm in the same boat as the original poster. Problem with the sane supported list is it covers every scanner known to humanity from about a year ago back to the 80s. Which is fabulous if you have a scanner in hand and want to know if/how well it will work, but if you're looking to find out which scanners you're likely to be able to find for sale right now are going to work, it's not a lot of help. There are 248 scanners (as of today) listed on the sane support page as working completely with sane. As you google each one of them individually, you find many of them haven't been sold for years of not decades. If you try the other way and look at current scanners being sold at your favorite online retailer and try and search for these on the sane page, most of them simply aren't listed yet. You can make an educated guess based on whether or not earlier models in the same series were compatable, but that's it. Both of these options are time consuming and frustrating. All I (and I suspect the original poster) want is a list of (say) "five scanners which work with ubuntu which are in stores now" which gets updated every 6 months or so.. Which of course would require someone to volunteer to keep such a list, which isn't a trivial task.

#6

augustin - 04/17/2010 - 01:03

I happen to have already have a lexmark x2250.
Apparently it's not supported at all, but I found this:

The only way I have found it to work was to go into system> printers> change the driver to the lexmark 5000. Click print test page. While its printing change the driver again but this time to the lexmark z42 option. You have to do this everytime you restart your computer. I tried this with Hardy Heron.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=127749

#7

augustin - 04/17/2010 - 01:05

http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php?product=1669
here they say the printer works but no word on the scanner.

#8

augustin - 04/17/2010 - 01:12

there are only windows drivers:
http://support.lexmark.com/index?page=content&id=DR7274&actp=search&view...

#9

augustin - 04/22/2010 - 08:39

`Scanning' with a Digital Camera
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/sane-devel/2009-December/025633...

As I delve much deeper into the Linux scanner mess, the digital camera approach looks more and more tempting...

#10

augustin - 05/31/2010 - 12:58
Status:active» fixed

Finally, I won't buy any scanner at this time.

Anyhow, I documented in the wiki the best hardware compatibility resources that I came across will searching.

See also:
http://linux.overshoot.tv/wiki/hardware

#11

robot - 06/14/2010 - 17:10
Status:fixed» closed
Related pages:-18: Scanners

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

Post new comment

Edit issue settings
Note: changing any of these items will update the issue's overall values.
Use this field if you want to associate this issue to a specific wiki page. Enter the title of the wiki page. You can enter a comma separated list of nodes.
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Use [fn]...[/fn] (or <fn>...</fn>) to insert automatically numbered footnotes.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <blockquote> <cite> <code> <div> <em> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <img> <li> <ol> <pre> <strong> <ul> <table> <th> <td> <tr> <br>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically. (Better URL filter.)
  • You may post code using <code>...</code> (generic) or <?php ... ?> (highlighted PHP) tags.
  • Project issue numbers (ex. [#12345]) turn into links automatically.
  • Use [toc list: ol; title: Table of Contents; minlevel: 2; maxlevel: 3; attachments: yes;] to insert a mediawiki style collapsible table of contents. All the arguments are optional.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.


Theme by Dr. Radut.