I got a new Linux box a month or so ago. By “new” I of course mean a machine built out of scavenged parts hobbled together… Still, it’s new to me!
It’s an actual desktop machine, being the first Linux box I’ve owned that could run XWindows without just crawling like a snail. So onwards with the adventures of Desktop Linux!
I’m using Fedora Core 1, which I’m finding to be pretty nice. While looking through the menu at installed apps, I found one named ‘Scanning’ which is really XSane. Since I’ve got USB ports, I figured I test my old Umax scanner, and lo and behold, it sort of worked! I got line art to scan ok, but not photos. This is good, as I have to send faxes out once a month, and always hated using the buggy old Vistascan software under Mac OS 9 to do this… I’ll probably play around with it some more and see if I can get photos to work as well. Score 1 for Desktop Linux. (As long as we’re on the subject of old hardware, my next experiment will probably be with the old Palm III I’ve never got to work in Mac OS X.)
I’m finding it all quite exciting. I now have Mac OS X and Fedora right at my fingertips, with just a KVM switch to choose which I want to use…