This is gonna be a hard one...
I have an old(ish) laptop compac nx9010 and I am trying to make the HP ScanJet working. My distro is Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I tried to follow every step in sourceforge "SANE backend for UMAX Astra 610P/1220P/2000P (Umax equals ScanJet), but every time I got lost on the way. Even tried to install the Windows driver in Wine, ending up with a non-usable Wine driver that I cannot get rid of... Lastly, I bought a USB to parallel port cable as the computer don't find the parallel port scanner, but no use. Now I feel I'm up to my neck in s..t and cannot find a way out, so anyone out there, is there anything you can do? I'm 65 years old and feel like a complete idiot, so please if you feel like helping, take a short step at a time so I can follow.
Thank you in advance...

I can't say that I've set one up in the last 10 years but possibly if you install something like gnome-scan it should pull in the sane dependencies for you. Give it a try and let us know ..

Thanks for your hint. However, I did not succeed yet, when I tried to configure the package gnomescan-0.4.0.4 I got information about something missing:
"...Package gtk+-2.0 was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `gtk+-2.0.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
No package 'gtk+-2.0' found
./configure: line 20764: test: -gt: unary operator expected
checking for pkg-config... /usr/bin/pkg-config
checking pkg-config is at least version 0.9.0... yes
checking for GTK... configure: error: Package requirements ( gthread-2.0 >= 2.4.0 gimp-2.0 >= 2.2.0 gimpui-2.0 >= 2.2.0 gtk+-2.0 >= 2.10.0 ) were not met:

No package 'gthread-2.0' found
No package 'gimp-2.0' found
No package 'gimpui-2.0' found
No package 'gtk+-2.0' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables GTK_CFLAGS
and GTK_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details."

Could you (or anybody) please tell me in detail what next? For instance, how do I set the environment variables GTK_FLAGS and GTK_LIBS? I could not find those absent packages in Synaptic...

Can I ask why you're compiling from scratch, you don't like packages ?

Yes. Now I found the APP, installed it in sources list and downloaded (Gnome Scan=Flegita) from the Softvare Centre. The UI installed, but don't look quite as the screenshot in Martin Kaba's Kabatology and won't work either, not parport, not USB, so I still am back in square one... I uninstalled XSANE as told, but cannot find a way to check if I got rid of the SANE API backend too, guess it is still there. When I try to scan through Gimp or as standalone the UI shows for a second and then it disappears without performing anything, so something must definitely still be missing. So I think I have to check something out, don't know what and how, that's where I still need a helping hand.

Oops! I mean PPA...

FYI! I ran lpinfo -v and got this:
direct scsi
network lpd
network beh
network http
network ipp
network socket
serial serial:/dev/ttyS1?baud=115200
network smb
direct hp
direct parallel:/dev/lp0
network dnssd://Deskjet_F2400%20%40%20torbjorn-System-Name._ipp._tcp.local/cups
network dnssd://Deskjet_F2400_2%20%40%20torbjorn-System-Name._ipp._tcp.local/cups
direct hpfax

As you see, it finds my DeskJet, still I mcannot find a way to use it...

There's a couple of tools HPSCAN and HPINQ, it may be worth trying them to ensure communication is ok.

To install it I followed these directions:
"For building the executables from source you must already have built SANE from source. Extract the tar file within the sane-backends directory. Change to directory tools and run the command

makefile -f makefile.hptools"

This is where I got stuck with not having /backend/sane_strstatus.o and /sanei/libsanei.a, so I can't get any further...

This is solved (sort of...)

I found out that the scanner was in fact not working, it was tested on Windows (huh) 95 and 98 and it moved but only produced a black page, so I donated it to the scrapyard.