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Making an Epson Scanner Work Under Ubuntu

We had a HP copier/scanner that we stopped buying ink for and used solely as a scanner for many years and this month it finally gave up the ghost. The power button no longer works and I don't have the patience or the expertise to revive it. So I ordered a plausible looking scanner at an online retailer (you can guess which) that offered to deliver it next day.

The scanner was an Epson Perfection V39 II. (I kid you not, this is the actual model number.) I figured it would be about as hard as the old scanner to use: in that case, it worked out-of-the-box. Not quite true for the Epson. I tried just connecting the USB and running Ubuntu's default Document Scanner. Nothing, the software just didn't see there was any scanner present.

There's no Linux driver available on the site named in the printed instructions (https://epson.com/support), only Windows and macOS. However, if I searched on the site for "Linux", I could find a page about Linux Support for Epson Products, which links to another page where it's possible to search for drivers.

I found the best match and downloaded, ending up with a file named epsonscan2-bundle-6.7.70.0.x86_64.deb.tar.gz, which I could unpack easily enough:

tar zxvf epsonscan2-bundle-6.7.70.0.x86_64.deb.tar.gz
# creates a directory named epsonscan2-bundle-6.7.70.0.x86_64.deb
cd epsonscan2-bundle-6.7.70.0.x86_64.deb
# here there is a file called install.sh -- run it
./install.sh
# enter your password for sudo -- installing the driver software needs root privileges

This installs both the proprietary driver and a program called, naturally, epsonscan2. It did not install all the dependencies I needed. In particular, it didn't install some QT libraries, causing this error message:

epsonscan2: error while loading shared libraries: libQt5Widgets.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I installed it myself:

# first searching for what deb has the library
apt-file search libQt5Widgets.so.5
libqt5widgets5t64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Widgets.so.5
libqt5widgets5t64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Widgets.so.5.15
libqt5widgets5t64: /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libQt5Widgets.so.5.15.13
# then installing it
sudo apt-get install libqt5widgets5t64

Having done that, was able to run epsonscan2. I ran it from the command line, in order to see any error messages more easily.

I ran into some more error messages trying to run it:

QSocketNotifier: Can only be used with threads started with QThread
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
libpng warning: iCCP: known incorrect sRGB profile
qt.qpa.wayland: Wayland does not support QWindow::requestActivate()

As it turned out, these didn't prevent it from starting. After some playing around, I connected the scanner while Epson's program was running, it detected the scanner and initialized the driver correctly. I could hear the scanner make some mechanical noises and see the blue LED light up on the front of it.

I didn't use epsonscan2 for anything more than the first setup. After that, the regular Document Scanner now works, and it's far more polished and easy to use. Yes, I can confirm, it works with Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS (Noble Numbat).

There is actually online documentation for epsonscan2 that you can consult if you run into issues. I found it too late to use it myself, but it might be helpful to someone else.