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I desperately would like to use my Next Engine 3D model scanner(http://www.nextengine.com/) in Ubuntu 12.04. The software installs nicely using wine, but the device drivers do not install. I am clueless on how to do this and I would greatly appreciate some direction.

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If the manufacturer doesn't provide Linux drivers, and no alternative drivers exist, then you cannot use the device on Ubuntu. Wine cannot install drivers, because they are too system-level, rather than user-level objects.

If this is a USB device, you can use the device in VirtualBox with USB passthrough. You will need to download the package from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads, and not the version of VirtualBox in the Software Center, since OSE does not include USB passthrough.

More inforation on USB passthrough can be found in the VirtualBox manual: http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#idp13237504

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If I run virtualbox wont I really have to run windows since the usb device was designed for windows? Won't this cause resource hogging by having ubuntu and windows running simultaneously? Sorry, I'm just not familiar with how it works. Will I be able to close th vb windows once the drivers are loaded? – user76770 Jul 21 '12 at 6:18
@user76770: Yes, unfortunately, you will need a copy of windows to use VirtualBox for this. – undecim Jul 22 '12 at 0:37

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