John Stumbles wrote:
On Sat, 12 Mar 2011 19:09:48 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Can. but not always and not always seamlessly. If the right 2 bit
libraries are not available, you are in serious geek territory to get
things working.

I'm thinking that if I run a basic 64-bit Debian on the machine with
VirtualBox, I can then run a 32-bit distro in one VM so I should be able
to use whatever works with my peripherals. Wouldn't I?

Yes. Probaly use a windoze for the scanner at least, as Xsane is a bit crap.

But you do need to talk to printers directly. Thst not a 64 bit issue
tho, its a cups PPD issue.