I’ll look into the firmware idea. Though if the OS thinks a MS webcam is scanner … !
Yast can see the scanner, but whatever I do still says it is not configured.
No, this scanner model does not require firmware. Neither is YaST needed to configure a scanner. What is needed is driver support and that appears to be missing. In post #2 of this thread I linked to a page describing support for the LiDE 120 via a particular git source. When I built that ‘sane-genesys’ backend, the man page now listed this model explicitly which was promising. Without being able to replicate this, its probably best to stay with vuescan, or use a SANE-supported model.
Building the ‘sane-genesys’ backend did not work for me. Probably my error. Buying an old CanoScan N1220U, which is listed, was my attempt to circumvent the problem, which it didn’t. But it did work, sort of, with Vuescan. It was while trying to make it work properly that I discovered how to make the LiDE 120 work with Vuescan. Having paid for Vuescan, I’ll stay with the current setup.