How To Install sane-airscan on Debian 11

In this tutorial we learn how to install sane-airscan on Debian 11. sane-airscan is SANE backend for AirScan (eSCL) and WSD document scanner

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install sane-airscan on Debian 11.

What is sane-airscan

sane-airscan is:

Similar to how most modern network printers support “driverless” printing, using the universal vendor-neutral printing protocol, many modern network scanners and MFPs support “driverless” scanning.

Driverless scanning comes in two flavors:

  • Apple AirScan or AirPrint scanning (official protocol name is eSCL)
  • Microsoft WSD, or WS-Scan (term WSD means “Web Services for Devices)

This backend implements both protocols, choosing automatically between them. It was successfully tested with many devices from Brother, Canon, Kyocera, Lexmark, Epson, HP, Ricoh, Samsung and Xerox both in WSD and eSCL modes.

There are three methods to install sane-airscan on Debian 11. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install sane-airscan Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install sane-airscan using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install sane-airscan

Install sane-airscan Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install sane-airscan using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install sane-airscan

Install sane-airscan Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install sane-airscan using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install sane-airscan

How To Uninstall sane-airscan on Debian 11

To uninstall only the sane-airscan package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove sane-airscan

Uninstall sane-airscan And Its Dependencies

To uninstall sane-airscan and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 11, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove sane-airscan

Remove sane-airscan Configurations and Data

To remove sane-airscan configuration and data from Debian 11 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge sane-airscan

Remove sane-airscan configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove sane-airscan configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge sane-airscan

Dependencies

sane-airscan have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install sane-airscan package on Debian 11 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.