Scanning

Most scanners are automatically supported by Xubuntu, and should be easy to install and operate. This guide will walk you through how to use your scanner and what to do if Xubuntu cannot find your scanner.

Does my scanner work with Xubuntu?

There are three ways to see if you scanner works in Xubuntu:

  1. Simply plug it in and try it! If it is a newer Universal Serial Bus (USB) scanner, it is likely that it will just work.

  2. Check the Ubuntu Scanner Hardware Support wiki page, which is Ubuntu specific.

  3. SANE project listing of support scanners - The SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy) project provides most of the backends to the scanning software on Ubuntu.

Using your scanner

Most of the time, Xubuntu will simply detect your scanner and you just be able to use it. To scan a document, you need to follow these steps:

  1. Place what you want to scan on the scanner.

  2. Choose ApplicationsGraphicsXSane Image Scanner.

  3. Alternately, pressing the scan button on the scanner should also work.

What if it says „No devices available”?

There are two reasons why you might get this message.

  1. Your scanner is not supported in Xubuntu. The most common type of scanners not supported are old parallel port scanners or Lexmark All-in-One printer/scanner/faxes.

  2. The driver for your scanner is not being autoloaded.

Manually installing a scanner

There are some scanners that have less than complete drivers from the SANE project. They can sometimes be used, but not all the features may work.

  1. Make sure the Universe repository is enabled. The easiest way to do this is through Synaptic. Launch Synaptic by choosing ApplicationsSystemSynaptic Package Manager. Then from the menus select SettingsRepositories. Check the box next to Universe if it is not already checked. Click on Close then click the Reload button to refresh the package listings.

  2. Get the drivers by searching Synaptic. Click Search then enter libsane-extras in the dialog and press Search.

  3. Edit the /etc/sane.d/dll.conf and enable the right driver for your scanner. You can do this by pressing Alt-F2 on your keyboard then typing sudo gedit /etc/sane.d/dll.conf and pressing Run. Look for the lines that say:

    								# The following backends are not part of the SANE distribution
    	# but are provided by the libsane-extras Debian package
    							

    Below these lines are several commented out lines (they begin with #). Uncomment (delete the #) the right one for your scanner.

  4. Fire up XSane and scan away.

[Megjegyzés]

Because of the way hotplugging works in Xubuntu, you may need to plug in the scanner after the computer has booted. If you're having problems seeing the scanner, you might want to try this.

XSane Image Scanner

You can use XSane to control a scanner and acquire images from it. With XSane, you can easily photocopy documents and save, fax or e-mail your scanned images. It can even save your scans as multi-page documents, instead of separate, one-page files. The Xsane website has more information.

  • To start XSane choose ApplicationsGraphicsXSane Image Scanner.

[Megjegyzés]

XSane can also be used from within The GIMP; just click FileAcquireXSane to scan directly into an image.