I really must try WINE - got as far as installing it, took one puzzled look and put it aside for later.

As far as the scanner is concerned - do you have Simple Scan installed in Mint? It's in the Ubuntu/Mint repos, and although very basic, suits me fine.

I've seen it work on my ancient Epson DX6000 and on a friend's HP-something - seems to have reasonable driver support. Easier than trying to install drivers in WINE if you just want to scan things, but it lacks OCR and all that good stuff.