linux dedictated for a few tasks?

[transke]

hi

I was just wondering for some tips about these needs:

Linux just for scanning and saving images from 35mm negatives and positives. The scanner is USB interface. No other needs at the moment, but later I need to a have a connection to the internet. I just want to try if the quality of the scanning gets better in linux.

Which distro? And I need as much free memory as possible, so I do not need all the extras like editing tools and much processes running in the background. All suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Please tell me if this belongs in another forum...

T.S.

[Icarus]

We could put this in iso confused, since it sounds like you are trying to decide which one to use.

My suggestion would be Gentoo, but if you don't have the patiance go with Debian

[hard candy]

Slackware, baby! And I hope you have a Epson scanner- they work the best with linux. What brand is it?
Check out "sane-backends" on Google and "xsane' on Googlel and see if your scanner is supported. No need to load linux if it is one of the brand new Cannons, some work but not as well as in Windows or OSX.

[transke]

thanks for the tips

why would I choose slackware? or Debian? I tried to use both but it did not recognize my S-ATA harddisk. I could install it with P-ATA though.

My scanner is a Minolta dedicated filmscanner. I know that Canon would be a problem for Linux because it is even so for Windows. Canon does not give detailed info about their products so that no one can develop good drivers or other software for their scanner. And I am told that Canons own software is crap...

T.S.

[blobaugh]

If you want something really easy use mandrake

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Originally posted by blobaugh
If you want something really easy use mandrake

Mandrake would probably have way too much overhead for what he's wanting.

I'd look firstly at Debian, because you can apt-get a 2.6 kernel for it, which will support your SATA drive. Slackware's another choice, as you can manually install a 2.6 kernel. Gentoo's a VERY good choice in my eyes, because you can choose to install a 2.6 kernel when initially installing the system.

Those are the 3 that I'd choose. Debian will probably have you up and running the quickest, because of apt-get. Gentoo will allow you to customize things, and be more integrated with that SATA drive, but it will take longer. Slackware, as much as I like it, doesn't have much integration to speak of, and anything that isn't available as a SlackPak (*.tgz) you will have to compile for yourself.