“As a big gadget fan, I often get disappointed when I run across
something that looks like fun but has no Linux support. When I
researched into whether or not I could buy a digital camera to work
with my Linux machines, I was told the dreaded words “Windows or
Macintosh only”. What I found after researching the situation more
seriously, though, was that I’d have very few problems using Linux
if I took the plunge and invested in a digital camera. I decided to
talk to a few of the people who’d helped me along the way to this
decision a little further and find out what the facts really
are.”
“Nathan Poznick lives in Arkansas. He’s had his Kodak
DC-200+ camera for almost a year and a half, and had no hesitations
in telling me that making his camera work under Linux was an easy
task. Nathan connects via the serial port on the back of his
camera to his Debian GNU/Linux install. From there, he uses the
popular program gPhoto to download his images, and then to delete
them from the camera afterwards.”
“I spoke to Nathan about the simplicity of using his camera in
Linux, rather than in Windows; something we were sure camera buyers
would be worried about. He removed my worries, for the second time.
Nathan first started using his camera in Linux by using the apt-get
function of Debian GNU/Linux to install gPhoto- apt-get is a
function of a Debian system that finds a program without you
needing to know where to download it from- and then installs and
configures the program. Once that was done, Nathan set gPhoto to
read his COM1 port (ttyS0) and his Kodak camera. Now anytime he
wants to download his shots, he just has to run gPhoto, and the
camera starts sending the pictures across the link.”