Scanners are supported under sane for Linux. I've got a AGFA Snapscan 1236S SCSI scanner and this works fine with sane, xscanimage, the X window interface and xsane, a separate X interface for sane. This also works directly as a plug-in for gimp as well. I would recommend going to :
www.mostang.com/sane and check for supported scanners BEFORE buying anything. My first scanner was an AGFA 1212U USB scanner, which wasn't supported, but now support is available. Once you are sure the scanner you are buying is supported, you can use apt-get to install xsane, this will install the rest of sane as it depends on it. The configuration _should_ be fine once you use apt-get to install. This worked for me first time. If it doesn't, check the doc's. There are a few config files you can change to get everything working. Let me know if you have any problems, and I can try to talk you through it. I'm no expert, but I have been doing some work with my scanner and know a few things to try. Cheers, John Gay