I use debootstrap to install debian most times. I can choose my partitioning before even running that command to install debian. It creates a chroot environment, to make it bootable you have install a kernel and set a root password $(passwd). Plus install and configure a boot manager. I'll often just update-grub on the install I installed the debootstrap install from. There's other housekeeping I guess too, like installing firmware, copying /etc/apt/sources.list from a working install. And /etc/resolv.conf. Plus having network bits in place to connect to the internet and finish the install once you're booted to it. But the two main ones is installing a bootable kernel and setting the root password, and once booted you could do everything else needed from that install. It is however a minimal install so you don't have much to work with beyond a shell. And in buster you can finally umount the chroot without systemd getting in the way (much).

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 9.9.0 _Stretch_ - Official amd64 DVD Binary-1 20190427-10:30]/ stretch contrib main

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 9.9.0 _Stretch_ - Official amd64 DVD Binary-1 20190427-10:30]/ stretch contrib main

deb http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch/updates main contrib
deb-src http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch/updates main contrib non free

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib nonfree
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib nonfree

# stretch-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non free
deb-src http://ftp.nz.debian.org/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non free

@shadow_7
well..
they ended up with lvm2 , which is arguably better than hard partitions.

##edit typo ##The nonfee non free are incorrect
The nonfree non free are incorrect

they should be non-free
edit I also exaggerated the -


change those
and then do

Actually that may not change much
I 'broke' my source list and it seemed happy ( it just ignored the non-free repos )


I've just noticed you are missing a non-free
you could d/l source packages for non-free but not the binaries

still, I have no idea why it is not picking up the dependencies for ocrfeeder

My Containerized Stretch only has main and it finds them no problem.

I have installed Debian 10 and can install ocrfeeder. It only works as superuser but that's OK. However bash is installed but there is no means of accessing it. Neither xterm nor uxterm is a satisfactory alternative. I use Cinnamon not Gnome which I dislike. That may be the problem.
Earlier versions of Debian had Terminal in the menu but 10 doesn't.
Life gets very difficult!

Regards

Alaric

I did OCR professionally for a big contract here, and later for myself. So I know the basics.

Tesseract is it in Open source. Unless your disks are tiny, install debian 12 even on a usb disk, for tesseract. Use a minimum of 400DPI.; GOCR was miles behind performance-wise. There is this Commercial thing, Abbyy OCR which was used under M$ windows, and that's better again. Abbyy did a linux version and had a one month free trial on it. It's a kludgy install but good OCR.

I rescued the single surviving copy of my Dad's 2nd play that was typed up on a typewriter with the ribbon totally shot, and had handwritten edits in fountain pen with Abbyy, but tesseract wasn't far behind. The handwriting is always totally illegible to these scanners. It's good to pass these things through a word processor, so I resist scan2pdf, etc. Don't ignore the capabilities of a mobile phone either!

/Tangent:
What I'd really like to see is AI figuring some of this muddle out - deciphering unreadable writing, the Enigma codes, or other puzzles. Thet really tests the 'I' part of AI .