14 DAY TRIAL // Softpedia was informed by Fujitsu's Michelle Johal about the general availability of proprietary Linux binary drivers for the company's Fujitsu SP series of scanner products.
It appears that the Fujitsu SP scanners are quite popular these days, and now that more and more computer users make the switch to an open source, Linux-based operating systems, the demand for drivers supporting this platform has grown much faster in the past months. Therefore, Fujitsu is proud to announce today the free availability of Image Scanner Driver for Linux 2.0.0.
"With the popularity of Linux on standard desktop computers increasing and an increasing number of smart devices being based on Linux derivatives, our support of this platform with a dedicated driver is a logical step," says Klaus Schulz, Senior Manager Product Marketing at PFU (EMEA) Limited. "Once again we are putting the focus on evolving customer requirements and the product developments that go with it."
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 14.04 LTS are the only officially supported distributions
As you can see from the screenshot attached to the article, Fujitsu's new proprietary scanner driver is officially tested and supported only on the Ubuntu platform, allowing users to install it on either the newer Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) or the older Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system. Both 64- and 32-bit installations of these OSes are supported by the driver.
Being a proprietary driver and all that, there is no source code and you'll have to agree the EULA license before downloading. Fujitsu also provides Linux users with a User's Guide of their image scanner driver, as well as README PDF document that you should read prior to activating the drive on your GNU/Linux distribution. Most probably, the Fujitsu SP driver will also work on other Ubuntu-based OSes, such as Linux Mint.