I could use xsane as root, but had to
Google to learn how to get it to work for
other users. This was one of the more
difficult hardware issues I've ever had to
configure, and it only took me as long as
an hour, because the man page was unusually
bad. Some guy with a German e-mail address
wrote the GUI xsane to work with the
scanner package sane, which of course is a
cute acronym -- for 'scanner access now
easy.' Anyway, he had some suggestions
about creating symlinks, and changing
permissions of certain files and
directories, which were 3 or 4 levels
from /, so it took some time to verify that
those all did not work. So then I flipped
off the general direction of Germany &
flipped on my Google, and found the answer
within 15 minutes.

http://www.debianhelp.org/node/11010

Now that that's done, I want to address a
couple of JohnMcGrew's good points.

Their PC [is] a tool.

These people aren’t getting into computers
as a hobby like I did almost 30 years ago,
but are doing so because they expect to be
able to do things with them.

Yes, that's me.

For a mature product, there shouldn’t be
the kind of barriers we’ve discussed here.


Do you agree that Patch Tuesdays,
re-booting for every new driver, and
third-party anti-virus scanners are also
not the kind of barriers there should be in
a mature product? If not, there is probably
nothing further to discuss. If so, we
should compare the magnitudes, contexts,
and costs of these two types of
unacceptable manifestations of immaturity.

And as for Microsoft, I wish to see
Linux emerge as a 3rd alternative for a
desktop operating system. That is the only
thing that is going to get Microsoft to
clean up its act. But for Linux to do that,
its advocates are going to have to learn
what makes Microsoft successful; to date,
they seem to either ignore or scorn those
lessons.

Linux has more "users" than "advocates,"
because most users of it find that it does
what we want it to do, very reliably thank
you, after a bit of up-front learning.
Attacking a steep learning curve, in my
experience, is something that a person is
either willing to do, or not; there's no
reasoning with some people.