scanning under Linux

I have a pile of negatives and slides that I would like to scan. I

have no experience whatsoever in scanning and no idea even how to

start researching which scanner to buy.

I have looked at Nikon webpages to find out about their Coolscan

scanners, but have difficulty finding out what the differences are.

An additional problem is that I'm going to use the scanner under Linux

(SuSE) operating system and I don't know which software will work and how.

Does anyone have experience with scanning under Linux? Which scanner

do you use? And which software? I have heard of Twain and Sane, but I

don't know if these are usable with any scanner. Are there any

scanners that are impossible to operate under Linux?

Another question: can you recommend a shop (either on the internet or

in the Netherlands) where you can buy such scanners? Up to now it

seems every shop sells only flatbed scanners...

I have not done it, but Vuescan is available for Linux (<a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html">http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html</a> see the release notes for some info.) If your kernel is not very old you should get USB devices detected easily, so if Vuescan works well it shouldn't be too difficult to start scanning (check for software support for a paticular model before buying.)

<p>I don't know about buying in the Netherlands, but at least <a href="http://www.ny-camera.de/">NY Camera</a> sells online and there are good photo stores in western Germany.

Edith,

it shouldn't be too difficult to find shops in the Netherlands selling quality scanners other

than flatbed-ones. Just go for a quality shop selling cameras, not a "computer-shop"..

Using a Coolscan V myself (bought in the Netherlands by the way), I can only say that the

scans whilst working with Vuescan come out very well. The Nikon software that comes

with the scanner does work well too, but I prefer the "logic" of Vuescan, so if the Linux

version is as good as the Mac-version I use, you shouldn"t have any problems.

Success!

<p>I don't use SuSE, but you might want to make sure that the hotplug

daemon is properly setting permissions on libusb devices so that

ordinary users can write to the scanner device. It doesn't under

Slackware by default, and it's something that really annoyed me until

I figured out what was going wrong and fixed it.

<p>Sane's great for a lot of flatbeds, but Vuescan is much better for

film, both GUI-wise and driver-wise. Also, check to make sure that

your SuSE installation is using Glibc version 2.3 or higher. Newer

Vuescan versions don't work with 2.2.

Thanks a lot for your answers! It seems like Vuescan is the program to use and that most common scanners are supported by Vuescan. I've checked and my current distribution does use glibc 2.3.

About the hotplug daemon, I'm not sure how to check this and whether this is necessary, as it might be impossible to use a scanner as a hotplugging device - I have to say that I am quite ignorant about these things and don't know exactly what that means...

I use Vuescan under Linux to scan. I've used it with a sequence of RedHat distributions and now I've tested it with Fedora Core 2. There are sometimes some adjustments you have to make to various configuration files, but it is not too difficult to get it to work. I use it with an Epson 3200, but I wouldn't recommend that (or its successor Epson 4870) for 35 mm scanning. It should be adequate for medium or large format.

You can check Vuescan at www.hamrick.com, and he lists the scanners that the program works with. Rarely a scanner may work udner Windows but not under Linux, but usually it can be fixed.

You can get more information by doing a google groups search of the newsgroup comp.periphs.scanners. Try some combination of Coolscan and Linux. You can also post your question to that newsgroup.

Edith

If you're using SuSE 8.2 or above, you should have no problems. , all the auto hotplug stuff is enabled by default. I too would suggest vuescan.