On Wed, Nov 09, 2022 at 12:04:44PM -0500, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
If I had to guess, Evan's problem (the one that started this thread) stems from a software package that hasn't been updated in some time and no longer matches what the distro provides.
Packages bit-rot. One can do things to reduce this effect but it can hardly be eliminated.
Sometimes a package is smart enough to refuse to install when its requrements are not met. But users aren't happy. How many screw-heads have been mangled my impatient users with to wrong screwdriver?
Speaking of bit-rot, ...
I recently bought a scanner from CZUR because it was to support Linux. Well, they only supplied a binary .deb package. This is a problem: - .deb won't work on my Fedora system - "alien" won't turn it into a .rpm - after a few queries, CZUR support sent me an RPM - the RPM elicits error from dnf on my system - CZUR support says to use "dnf --force". I haven't tried yet.
This solution is going to suffer bit-rot. It was a mistake thinking that this scanner supports Linux in a meaningful way.
I see people claiming many CZUR scaners are just UVC devices, and that there exists programs that can capture from that, like guvcview and a few others. It strangely does sound like it is actually more of a video camera than a scanner. Maybe your model is something else? -- Len Sorensen