Scanner with excellent Linux support and ADF (up to 1000 EUR)

Need a scanner, price up to 1000 EUR.

Absolute requirements:

• Excellent Linux support under Debian
• Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) for at least 20 pages in A4 format
• Duplex
• At least 300 DPI
• USB connection to computer

Nice to have:

• Only packages from Debian repositories required
• Fast operation (we have loads of pages to scan)
• 600 DPI or higher
• Optional scanning to USB stick without any computer

"Excellent Linux support" in particular means that we can easily start a scan from a tool like gscan2pdf, and it will scan all the pages in the ADF into a single PDF file. It should also be possible to scan some more pages after this and have them added to the same PDF file.

Conclusion: We bought the Brother ADS-3600W. It did not work out-of-the-box under Debian/buster, but we had to download a DEB file from Brother’s homepage, which currently isbrscan5-1.2.2-0.amd64.deb. Installing this DEB and rebooting made all scan programs recognize the device. Of course, it would be much, much nicer if Brother offered a repository instead, so that updates would come via apt.

We mostly use gscan2pdf. It works fine in the range up to documents about 70 pages (scanning up to 50 pages at a time, since the scanner has a 50 page feeder). After this, it becomes very slow, almost unusable. We suspect this is a problem with program gscan2pdf and not with the scanner or its driver. Waiting and hoping for a new version of the program.

We also received verbal confirmation from Epson that the Workforce DS-870 does work with SANE under Linux. This scanner has a 100 page feeder and would thus have been better. However, since Epson insisted on prehistoric communication (that is, via phone and not e-mail), this message arrived too late, after we already ordered the Brother. Maybe next time.