One
of the well known Linux problem is the lack of hardware drivers. I've
sometime complained,
in the past, about the poor support my HP
ScanJet G4050 scanner had on Linux promising myself to try to
find a solution using VirtualBox with a Windows guest machine.
Fortunately a good enough SANE
scanner driver came out and I forgot quickly about my intent. I lived
well with my SANE driver recently when I found a bunch of old film
negatives. The HP SANE driver works fine and fast but doesn't support
the scanner transparent materials adapter (TMA). I so decided to go
back to my initial idea about using VirtualBox and a Windows guest
machine.
Setting-up VirtualBox
In order to fully support USB devices
an extension pack has to be installed in addition to VirtualBox main
program. The extension pack version must match with the VirtualBox
one. Since the VirtualBox version I used, installed with Ubuntu
Software Centre, did not match with any of the available versions I
had to download
both main program and extension pack.
I first uninstalled the the
VirtualBox version I had on my computer then I installed the
downloaded “.deb” file. Once the right version was ready I could
eventually install the expansion pack from VirtualBox preferences.
The extension pack installation
starts asking confirmation first
