Any distros that support an HP Scanjet 4850?
 

It seems I've cleverly ended up with a distro (PCLinuxOS) that supports almost every HP scanner except the one I own. Is this scanner supported by any other Linux flavors?

vnkinnaman,

It is not a distro issue: it is HP not voluntarily opening up its drivers to the free software users. Another ironical stupidity of proprietary practice: as if as we in the open software are not paying the right price in obtaining their hardware.

HP Scanjet 4850 and 4890 is still a problem. Sane-project says: " These devices could be supported by the genesys backed later. Both scanners have the same USB id. It looks like a GL841 chipset to sane-find-scanner, but it's actually a GL843. (It's viewable from outside when the carriage is not in the parking position.)" Get their comment here.

We have to wait. It won't be long.

All hopes are with the code hackers.

It isn't the flavor of linux...

The Scanjet 4850 is not supported by any distribution since there is no driver written for the scanner chip used in this device. There is nothing to be done without HP revealing sufficient information, or for somebody with sufficient intelligence, insight and patience to understand enough about the relevant chip, in order for someone to be able to write a driver.

If you need a stand alone scanner, you might look for a Canon Lide 20/30, or HP 5100c/5200c, or one of the other supported scanners on the SANE list .

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html

Otherwise, one of the all-in one machines that is supported by the HPLIP project will give you a scanner along with a printer, but the HPLIP driver will not support a scanner alone.

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web...ces/index.html

Thanks for the good info. I have an ancient iBook that can run the scanner software, but when it dies a new scanner will have to come aboard. Used to run the scanner with Windows, but one of the Windows updates broke the HP software and now it refuses to load. No desire to go back to the "Dark Side", anyway.