Let me preface my response by saying that I do not consider myself a professional photographer. Nor am I an expert on Linux. I base the first part on less than half of my income is derived through sales related to photography. My experience with the use of Linux is that of a novice home user interested in select programs.
While I join the many others that recommend your spending money to upgrade equipment and software I understand that this is currently not an option available. The solution I present is a process that I used in the past when I was limited to a flatbed scanner for my slides; and that I continue to use today for 4x5 transparencies and negatives. What I found from my use of the flatbed scanner was the plane of focus for the scanner was the top of the glass. Slides in their mounts would always be out of focus being that the mounted transparency was higher than the plane of focus. To get sharp scans I would take the mount apart and would lay the transparency directly on the glass. This was fine for focus but the color was still jacked. I decided one day that the color of light emitted by the transparency adapter was the wrong kelvin and switched to the light box I use. I would position four caps from film canisters on the scanner glass to act as posts and lay my cabin light box on top of the caps. For the larger transparencies I would also use a piece of optically clear glass that I would place on top of the transparency or negative to flatten the curling media.
Now having said this, I spent an inordinate amount of time and energy cleaning the glass on the scanner and my piece of clear glass to keep the images as dust free as possible. When I could afford to I picked up a used CanonScan FS2710 on ebay for $30.00 and use that with Fedora Core 2, XSane, and Gimp to scan in the 35mm transparencies. The film scanner is not supported under XP so the Linux option was the best available. When I can afford to I will be upgrading the film scanner again to something that will support scanning the larger film media.
Another option you may try is using a slide copy attachment for a digital camera and shooting against a light box.
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Let me preface my response by saying that I do not consider myself a professional photographer. Nor am I an expert on Linux. I base the first part on less than half of my income is derived through sales related to photography. My experience with the use of Linux is that of a novice home user interested in select programs.
While I join the many others that recommend your spending money to upgrade equipment and software I understand that this is currently not an option available. The solution I present is a process that I used in the past when I was limited to a flatbed scanner for my slides; and that I continue to use today for 4x5 transparencies and negatives. What I found from my use of the flatbed scanner was the plane of focus for the scanner was the top of the glass. Slides in their mounts would always be out of focus being that the mounted transparency was higher than the plane of focus. To get sharp scans I would take the mount apart and would lay the transparency directly on the glass. This was fine for focus but the color was still jacked. I decided one day that the color of light emitted by the transparency adapter was the wrong kelvin and switched to the light box I use. I would position four caps from film canisters on the scanner glass to act as posts and lay my cabin light box on top of the caps. For the larger transparencies I would also use a piece of optically clear glass that I would place on top of the transparency or negative to flatten the curling media.
Now having said this, I spent an inordinate amount of time and energy cleaning the glass on the scanner and my piece of clear glass to keep the images as dust free as possible. When I could afford to I picked up a used CanonScan FS2710 on ebay for $30.00 and use that with Fedora Core 2, XSane, and Gimp to scan in the 35mm transparencies. The film scanner is not supported under XP so the Linux option was the best available. When I can afford to I will be upgrading the film scanner again to something that will support scanning the larger film media.
Another option you may try is using a slide copy attachment for a digital camera and shooting against a light box.
Good Luck