Plustek OpticBook 3800 Flatbed Scanner install

BuzzPCSOS

I have got a Plustek OpticBook 3800 Flatbed Scanner, it works with Windows and is mostly the only reason that I still occasionally use that operating system.
Tried installing on Solus Budgie without much luck. There just didn't seem to be any drivers out there for this bit of hardware.
Any suggestions on how to get this running on Solus would be greatly appreciated. Happy to give feedback on any ideas that work.

tuxlover4

have you tried vuescan ? it is available as a flatpak app i believe .

tuxlover4

https://flathub.org/apps/com.hamrick.VueScan

BuzzPCSOS

tuxlover4 Thank you for your quick reply. I used Vuescan briefly about fifteen years ago and it worked well on an old scanner where the operating system would no longer talk to my hardware. It is an excellent solution for many users.
I tend to swap hard drives and reinstall OSs to fix problems so a paid licence that is tied to a specific machine does not work well for me. Buying licences of this type has cost me dearly over the years due to various hardware failures and a nasty virus/corruption that rendered my hard drive unusable.
For the cost of a licence I could cut my losses, bin my current scanner (and Windows) and get a smaller USB powered unit that had Linux support. I'm guessing a little research and a second hand Cannon or HP scanner would do the job.

brent

there are different driver/plugin packages for scanners in repo but it will be like throwing darts since I never heard of that brand.

you do need a driver/plugin.
~~what does plustek offer for linux support at their website I wonder?~~
lots of posts around here lately about driverless printing. maybe thats an option?
--just went to there website. they dont even have Mac support! Win only. But they sell a Linux scanner (model 3140) so mixed messages there. I think you have to play around.

"plustek scanner linux" has some interesting search results

BuzzPCSOS

brent "plustek scanner linux" has some interesting search results

It certainly did! Plustek had some of their scanner drivers included in the SANE project although support seems to end at 3600 which is not useful if your model is a 3800.
It also looks like some of the SANE Plustek drivers are used for the Canoscan range, probably down to common design features in the hardware. No point to this, it just interested me.
Pretty sure I tried connecting my scanner via SANE a while back without any luck. Maybe I should take a page out of the book of @WetGeek and try using Plasma with all it's wonderful tweaking tools. I have an old bitsa core two duo laptop in my spares box that should boot, which would alow me to experiment without worrying about messing up my main machine. Food for thought.

WetGeek

BuzzPCSOS try using Plasma with all it's wonderful tweaking tools

For me, Plasma also runs on a little travel laptop powered by a 2-core celeron cpu. It works. Not exciting performance, but well enough to keeping in touch with my email from a motel room. I'm pretty sure it should run well enough on your spare laptop to find out what you need to know.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I use an older cannon scanner and masterpdf editor
Solus saw the scanner just fine.
Did some searching came up empty handed.

BuzzPCSOS

Axios That is interesting, I wonder if you could add a model number to that information. I have been looking at stand-alone Canon scanners as an alternative option but there does not seem to be any reliable information of which ones work without the use of voodoo.
I have resurrected a junk box laptop with Plasma so I can try some ideas without messing up my main machine. It certainly didn't see my Optibook 3800 straight away. I was going to try tinkering with SANE in terminal but haven't had a chance to set it all up since my first try. Sadly I think that replacing this scanner may be the most sensible option.