diff --git a/nixos/lib/test-driver/Machine.pm b/nixos/lib/test-driver/Machine.pm
index 30664406b26d..c619264eb949 100644
--- a/nixos/lib/test-driver/Machine.pm
+++ b/nixos/lib/test-driver/Machine.pm
@@ -542,16 +542,20 @@ sub getScreenText {
     $self->nest("performing optical character recognition", sub {
         my $tmpbase = Cwd::abs_path(".")."/ocr";
         my $tmpin = $tmpbase."in.ppm";
-        my $tmpout = "$tmpbase.ppm";
 
         $self->sendMonitorCommand("screendump $tmpin");
-        system("ppmtopgm $tmpin | pamscale 4 -filter=lanczos > $tmpout") == 0
-            or die "cannot scale screenshot";
+
+        my $magickArgs = "-filter Catrom -density 72 -resample 300 "
+                       . "-contrast -normalize -despeckle -type grayscale "
+                       . "-sharpen 1 -posterize 3 -negate -gamma 100 "
+                       . "-blur 1x65535";
+        my $tessArgs = "-c debug_file=/dev/null --psm 11 --oem 2";
+
+        $text = `convert $magickArgs $tmpin tiff:- | tesseract - - $tessArgs`;
+        my $status = $? >> 8;
         unlink $tmpin;
-        system("tesseract $tmpout $tmpbase") == 0 or die "OCR failed";
-        unlink $tmpout;
-        $text = read_file("$tmpbase.txt");
-        unlink "$tmpbase.txt";
+
+        die "OCR failed with exit code $status" if $status != 0;
     });
     return $text;
 }
diff --git a/nixos/lib/testing.nix b/nixos/lib/testing.nix
index d8b5df004df8..58c447c76db6 100644
--- a/nixos/lib/testing.nix
+++ b/nixos/lib/testing.nix
@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ rec {
 
       vms = map (m: m.config.system.build.vm) (lib.attrValues nodes);
 
-      ocrProg = tesseract.override { enableLanguages = [ "eng" ]; };
+      ocrProg = tesseract_4.override { enableLanguages = [ "eng" ]; };
 
       # Generate onvenience wrappers for running the test driver
       # interactively with the specified network, and for starting the
@@ -111,7 +111,8 @@ rec {
           vms=($(for i in ${toString vms}; do echo $i/bin/run-*-vm; done))
           wrapProgram $out/bin/nixos-test-driver \
             --add-flags "''${vms[*]}" \
-            ${lib.optionalString enableOCR "--prefix PATH : '${ocrProg}/bin'"} \
+            ${lib.optionalString enableOCR
+              "--prefix PATH : '${ocrProg}/bin:${imagemagick}/bin'"} \
             --run "testScript=\"\$(cat $out/test-script)\"" \
             --set testScript '$testScript' \
             --set VLANS '${toString vlans}'