SANE update brings support for over 300 scanners and MFUs on Linux

SANE is not the most often updated pack of drivers and associated software around, but when they release, they do deliver.

Newly released SANE backends v1.0.25 features support for over 300 new scanners and multifunction units, quite of few which have been introduced in the past two years since the last release of SANE.

Relevant changes boil down to improvements in a variety of existing drivers (Canon, Fujitsu, Genesys, Kodak, and more) and arrival of new drivers: epsonds (Epson DS, PX and WF series), pieusb (PIE and Reflecta film/slide scanners). The support status page hasn’t been updated to reflect the changes yet.

The scanimage tool finally got support for saving to JPG and PNG (it only saved to PNM and TIFF beforehand).

The release also features a workaround by Allan Noah for buggy USB3/XHCI support on Linux. This should prevent you from “dancing on your left leg while sacrificing a goat” to launch scanning on newer Linux systems.

Expect an update in your Linux distribution of choice or grab source code and DIY.