How to Install gImageReader on Linux: Ubuntu, Fedora & Arch Guide (2026)

BygImageReader Team
⚡ Quick Answer

gImageReader is in the official repositories of most Linux distributions. On Ubuntu/Debian use the PPA (ppa:sandromani/gimagereader), on Fedora run sudo dnf install gimagereader-qt, and on Arch run sudo pacman -S gimagereader-qt.

Good news for Linux users: unlike Windows, you don’t need to hunt for installers — gImageReader is packaged for all major distributions. This guide covers installation on Ubuntu/Debian, Fedora, and Arch Linux, plus language packs and Wayland notes.

Ubuntu / Debian / Linux Mint

The latest builds come from the official PPA maintained by the developer:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sandromani/gimagereader sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gimagereader-qt

Prefer the GTK interface instead of Qt? Install gimagereader-gtk.

Fedora

gImageReader is in the official Fedora repositories — no third-party sources needed:

sudo dnf install gimagereader-qt # Or for the GTK interface: sudo dnf install gimagereader-gtk

Arch Linux

Available in the Extra repository:

sudo pacman -S gimagereader-qt

Installing Language Packs on Linux

On Debian/Ubuntu, the easiest way to add OCR languages is through the package manager — the tesseract-ocr-<lang> packages drop traineddata files in the right place automatically:

sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr-deu tesseract-ocr-fra tesseract-ocr-chi-sim

On Fedora and Arch, install the corresponding tesseract-langpack-* / tesseract-data-* packages, or copy .traineddata files manually as described in our language installation guide.

Wayland Notes

Recent versions (3.4.2+) include Wayland improvements. If the interface looks blurry or screenshots come out blank on Wayland, try launching with Qt’s X11 backend:

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb gimagereader-qt
Scanner support: On Linux, gImageReader talks to scanners via SANE. Install sane and your scanner’s driver, then use File → Acquire from scanner inside gImageReader.
Related guides: OCR on a Chromebook

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I install gImageReader on Ubuntu?
Add the developer’s PPA (ppa:sandromani/gimagereader), run apt-get update, then install the gimagereader-qt package. Full commands are listed in the Ubuntu section above.
Is gImageReader available for Fedora and Arch?
Yes. Fedora ships it in the official repositories (sudo dnf install gimagereader-qt) and Arch carries it in the Extra repository (sudo pacman -S gimagereader-qt).
How do I add German or Chinese OCR language on Linux?
On Ubuntu/Debian, install the tesseract-ocr-deu or tesseract-ocr-chi-sim packages. On other distributions, use the matching langpack packages or copy .traineddata files manually into the tessdata folder.

New to gImageReader?

Learn the complete workflow in our step-by-step beginner tutorial.

Read the Tutorial

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