Linux and your Scanner

What one year can mean to Linux in terms of peripheral support. Now, not only can you use a scanner in Linux simply, you can use a USB scanner. Woo hoo!

My scanner, an Acer 620UT, is working great starting with SANE version 1.0.7. Even the transparancy adapter is working. The only not-so-good feature is that I need to disconect-reconnect the USB cable from my monitor's built in USB hub before the Linux USB sub-system notices my scanner is present.

Configuring SANE

The only configuration change I needed to make is modifying the firmware line in /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf to point to the firmware file for my scanner. See SnapScan Backend for SANE site for additional information.

Aquiring Images

Now that we can use our scanner, how do you aquire images? First, if your system does not already have GIMP installed go get it. GIMP has a menu for aquiring images using SANE. Once you select Aquire, a host of dialogs appears to fine tune your scans.