[sane-devel] Epson Perfection 1650 Photo Scanner

[Michael Talbot-Wilson]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012, Tom Hunter wrote:

> I am trying to get my scanner back operational on Ubuntu.  I had to
> move it back to an XP system to continue using it after an
> upgrade. The upgrade was from 10.04 (it may have been 10.10) to
> 11.xx and later (yes its been a while,

I've tried to migrate from Slackware to Debian several times, but
always found it too complex and too difficult, so I've always had to
revert.

Sane's not something that needs to be started at boot time, so you
don't need to delve into all the boot-time complexities of those
systems as you would if you were trying to get iptables to work.

As an Epson Perfection 4990 Photo user I'd suggest that you keep
Ubuntu but download the Sane source archive, leave the prefix at the
default (going by memory --- I assume, like most free software, the
default prefix is /usr/local), and compile.  And install.  Under
/usr/local, outside anything Debianish, independent of all that.
(Which will happen automatically.)  Set your PATH to include
/usr/local/bin, and go.  (There may be some configuration I've
forgotten, but the INSTALL or README file in the source tree should
tell you about it.)

Okay, scanimage links to about 16 shared libraries.  Download, compile
and install any that are missing.  Forget the "dev" requirements that
are such a feature of those systems.  That's irrelevant if you're
compiling from source because it's all "dev", you install all the
header files automatically.  That's an artificial distinction.

Excessive dependence on the distro is a rod for your back.  It's not
Ubuntu, it's GNU/Linux.  Treat it as such.