Are there any current model scanners that work with Linux?

[Stephen Carter_5]

I use SLED 10, which uses SANE and has a huge list of supported scanners. Problem is I'm in the market for a new scanner and not a single currently available HP scanner seems to work under Linux.

From HP's UK website I ran through the entire list of scanners (not all-in-one units though as I already have a nice HP 2600n printer) then checked SANE and the HPLIP sourceforge project and cannot find a single scanner from the website listed.

HP isn't alone here. I'm considering almost anything now, although HP is still my preference. I'll look at anything from 20 pounds up to 150 pounds (I'm in the UK).

I'd just hate to burn a hole in my pocket spending money on a brand new scanner to find that it simply won't work with my workstation.

Any suggestions would be greatfully received, apart from buying 2nd hand.

Thanks!

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I'm sorry this has been so hard for you.

I think it should be easy to find such a device and all HP scanners should ship with Linux drivers.

Have you seen this:

http://www.linux.com/howtos/Scanner-HOWTO/interfaces.shtml

SEP

[Stephen Carter_5]

Thanks but that link just references back to SANE, which doesn't list a single current model HP scanner as being supported.

I'm going to try ringing a few of the bigger stores to see if they will let me bring in my laptop to try out what they have in store... hopefully a HP one will work!

Any other ideas would be great!

[Hmmm... · Accepted solution]

There is always an oppertunity that you can get an USB scanner to work with ndiswrapper, but of course that require that you can test the scanner and the ndiswrapper projects main goal is to support wirless.

ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net


Otherwise you have CanonScan LIDE20/30 with complete support and CanonScan LIDE25 with good support in sane.

http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Scanners/Flatbed/index.asp

[Stephen Carter_5]

I think you might be right. Although HP & Epson are a large list of supported scanners, the list isn't recent. However it looks like quite a few current model Canon scanners either have Good or Complete support by the sane-plustek backend.
I wish I could have found a HP scanner... I suppose in time it will get easier, but in the meantime I've ordered a CanoScan LIDE 25 for £34 pounds and will see how that goes.

Thanks for the tips and advice people.

[Hmmm...]

Linux life is a bit difficult, as companies has mostly just eyes open for Microsoft and in some case MacOS, even if there are more Linux users around.

I wish you a good luck with the Canon scanner, myself I have an old Benq scanner. The nice thing with sane is that it allows you to share scanners over the net too, so my scanner is connected to my "server" and I can access it from all my computer in my local network.

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

Sorry to say this but HP offers a quite restrictive set of drivers for their scanners. I recall once opening a support case with HP for a _real nice_ HP Scanjet we wanted to use with some type of Windows OS there was no driver available for. In the end we paid around $45 to be told that HP will never, ever supply other drivers than what we had already downloaded.
(I don't remember the Model, maybe a IV or V, defintely still in the >$1000 price range back then)

I still lust after some HP scanners, but without hope :)

[Rick Camarillo]

Hello,
I have an HP Officejet 6210. I am using "GSCAN2PDF" v0.7.12. I am able to scan on flatbed and ADF. Though I had to compile for Fedora 5.0, took a little help from a friend more experienced on linux. Works fine. Color or B/W.

Can save in several formats including PDF.

Maybe that will help,

rick

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

the Linux support for scanning with All_in_ones is not bad via HPLIP:
http://hplip.sourceforge.net/supported_devices/inkjet_aio.html

I use a network attached HP-G95 for scanning via SANE and it works really well.

Perhaps a used device out of the above list is a cheap and well working solution - even if you are using the other AIO stuff not at all.

mfG Peter

[Stephen Carter_5]

I bought a Canoscan LIDE 25 and it works flawlessly out of the box, with no downloads or modifications required which cost me 30 pounds. The only things that don't work are the special function buttons on the front of the scanner, but I'm happy not to worry about those as the xsane front end does a good job anyway.

The original issue I had, and still have I guess, was not a single HP unit in the pull down list of available scanners on my SLED10 box could be purchased brand new, from anywhere.

At the end of the day I'm very happy with my CanoScan LIDE 25 and would definately recommend the LIDE range of scanners to linux users looking for a dead easy, true plug and play scanning solution at this point in time (although I hope one day I can say the same about HP).