alt.hn

6/11/2026 at 10:23:59 AM

Using the Epson Perfection V39 II Scanner on Ubuntu

 https://patches.joao.town/using-epson-perfection-v39ii-scanner-ubuntu/

by joaopalmeiro

6/13/2026 at 4:47:26 PM

On the one hand, it's nice that Epson provided a Linux package.

On the other, it's a pain in the arse that it's specific to a handful of distributions.

I had a V33, and I use Void. At one point I was able to get it shimmed together, there was a wrapper package for the vendor-specific modules, but eventually it stopped working, so I went to the Goodwill and came home with a Canon LIDE 100 that Just Worked with SANE.

I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to buy new. It feels like the entire consumer scanner market is sort of dead. I can recall when you could go into any computer/electronic big-box shop and see a bunch of cheap little flatbed parallel (or eventually USB) scanners for like USD50 or less. They were a common sweetener in the name-brand PC bundles of the late 1990s/early 2000s. Now there's virtually nothing under USD100. It feels like it's a solved problem, too-- most home users don't need ever-increasing resolution or scan speed, so they could just keep cranking out 20 year old already-amortized designs.

by hakfoo

6/13/2026 at 8:45:33 PM

i think things like google drive scan to document with a camera phone is good enough for most people, no need for another device.

by woleium

6/13/2026 at 10:50:27 AM

My mom recently asked me to print something on her old HP printer from her laptop with Windows.

I was having a hard time (the laptop runs very slowly although it is an i5 with 16GB of RAM) so I installed hplip on my laptop and printed it from there.

I had to smile at how easy things have become in Linux that Windows got me frustrated and Linux solved the issue so quickly.

by forinti

6/14/2026 at 9:24:50 AM

Yes. I had a printer that decided that the ink pad was full. Presumably you're supposed to throw the printer away at that point? The windows option was some dodgy warez type thing that you have to pay for. Debian just had a package on the repo.

by benj111

6/13/2026 at 10:50:49 AM

Just download a third party binary? That is the Windows experience. It may work today, but who knows in a few years.

If you buy hardware for personal use, buy what has upstream support instead. If it works out of the box in a Linux desktop today, it will work in ten years time just the same.

by xorcist

6/13/2026 at 12:15:02 PM

The product name is mildly amusing. After 39 iterations and 2 revisions, I wonder if every previous version bore the Perfect moniker.

by echelon_musk

6/14/2026 at 9:28:18 AM

There's also 'Neverending Story 2'. 'The best album in the world ever part 2+' (though I suppose not technically impossible), and various 'Ultimate' things. And perhaps the Final Fantasies.

by benj111

6/13/2026 at 9:43:46 AM

I use the same scanner. I think it worked out of the box on Fedora 43.

by noisy_boy

6/13/2026 at 8:44:29 AM

I wish all blog posts and news articles were this pithy

by taspeotis

6/13/2026 at 9:12:13 AM

Me too. Every time I click on a medium link, 5 seconds in and I already closed the tab.

We don't need a thesis. Just get to the damn point.

by rrgok

6/13/2026 at 10:28:55 AM

This isn't so much of a blog post, though. For this format, I like keeping a notes site (mine is at https://notes.stavros.io/), where I publish small tips and things I want to remember, and figure someone else might need at some point.

I use Joplin with a small script I wrote.

by stavros

6/13/2026 at 2:35:34 PM

Works on an ecotank ET-3750, thanks.

by opengrass

6/14/2026 at 7:38:02 AM

[flagged]

by jm7020