I have an old Lexmark 3-in-one scanner/copier/printer and it’s been sitting on my desk collecting dust. I finally had a use for it today as I needed to scan something. I know that Lexmark printers are notorious for being unfriendly to Linux, so I did some searching before plugging the printer in.

Everywhere I looked showed that there is no scanning support for the Lexmark as they refuse to release any source code for their print drivers, and the only binaries they offer are for print functionality only.

Well I remembered that I had previously installed XSane (though for some reason I cannot remember why), so I figured I’d just mess around and see what happens.

I plugged in the Lexmark X1240 to my USB port and right away XSane kicked into gear! It gave me two options: eithe I just plugged in a camera or a scanner. Obviously it was the latter. I clicked scanner and bingo! I was in business! I hit scan and like magic it was done in no time!

The default file format is pnm so I just converted to png and I was done!

I’ll try to put pics up later.