20210101 A DIVERTING SOFTWARE DISASTER 
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My wife and I are digitising family photographs and documents. 
It's part of a family history project that has spanned several 
decades now. Today we bought a new flatbed scanner that promised 
to make things easier for us and provide better quality outputs.

I found that the scanner was available at a nearby Officeworks. 
Their price was considerably cheaper than Amazon and we would not 
need to pay for the shipping. Since, we were heading that way 
already, we stopped in and got the last one in stock.

I always like these little victories for local outlets.

My daughter, an expert in digital art, had suggested the brand. 
However, knowing that I won't keep a certain operating system in 
the house, she worried that the scanner might not work with my 
*nixes. I reassured her that the aging iMac would be my backup. 
However, the product description clearly indicated that the 
scanner would work with Linux.

When I got home, the very skimpy documentation warned that the 
accompanying CD/DVD only contained the drivers for the Windows and 
Mac operating systems. The company reassured me, their customer, 
that the software could be obtained at the listed website. 
However, the URL was redirected to the European landing page and 
not the Oceania page. Odd.

Not to worry. I fiddled until I found the correct location only to 
discover that the Linux drivers were not there. Fossicking around 
some more, I discovered them located elsewhere with some fairly 
decent instructions on how to install the drivers on the various 
flavours of Linux.

I dutifully followed the rather straightforward and commonplace 
install instructions. No worries. Except that the program couldn't 
detect the scanner after it was launched. So, I rebooted the 
computer, as you do. But, the darn thing couldn't get beyond the 
console on rebooting, twice. No amount of coaxing "startx" worked. 
So I looked and discovered X wasn't in its accustomed bin location 
which is a symlink in any case. The executable was also nowhere to 
be found.

No matter. I will simply reinstall the core. Except I couldn't 
reach the repos. Hmmmm. I checked ifconfig and discovered that I 
only had the local loopback. The hardware was there, but no 
drivers were in operation. Again, odd.

So, I rebuilt the DKMS modules. I received assuring messages that 
everything had been there when the computer was first shut down, 
but things hadn't been rosy on the reboot. Not a problem. The 
script kept chirping that everything was being rebuilt without a 
hitch and I should expect to be on my way shortly.

Except my poor Antix install on my Lenovo Mini 10 is still a wreck 
after all that. Fortunately, I only use that Mini to log books 
into my LibraryThing account with my team. So, no great loss of 
data. In fact, I'll probably just load MX 19 onto it to see if you 
can really install the OS without wiping $HOME.

Was it the new software? Was the hard drive going bad without me 
noticing? I don't know. But, it may be interesting to try and find 
out. On the other hand, I have some lessons to prepare on the 
topic of Git. Thank goodness I have a few spare Minis around the 
house. My wife now agrees that it's not necessarily a bad thing to 
invest in an extra pre-owned laptop or two, or a dozen or more.