[SOLVED] Is my Brother HL1112 printer going to be obsolete due to IPP?

beachboy2 · 10-10-2023, 08:43 AM

My Brother HL-1112 printer is not IPP-USB compatible (i.e. unable to run driverless).

I decided to bite the bullet and completely removed both ipp-usb and sane-airscan, via Package Manager.

I then installed brother-lpr-drivers-laser and brother-cups-wrapper-laser:

Code:

sudo apt install brother-lpr-drivers-laser brother-cups-wrapper-laser

I rebooted the PC and switched on the printer.

Everything worked perfectly and there was no need to search for the printer name followed by text “for CUPS”.

I then tried my USB Canon LiDE 210 scanner (which has simple-scan installed) and did a test scan. Thumbs up!

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaelk

Just a FYI. Basically cups printer drivers and backends are deprecated and will no longer be supported in a future release which I believe is version 3.0. Only printers that support IPP will work. I am not happy since I use custom backends for some specific tasks.

Whether my printer and scanner will survive future software “progress” as per michaelk’s warning is anybody’s guess.

EDIT I can now see that brother-lpr-drivers-laser and brother-cups-wrapper-laser are destined for the bin when CUPS is "improved".

I therefore removed both of them and installed printer-driver-brlaser.

My Brother printer and Canon scanner currently work fine.

Since printer-driver-brlaser is also a CUPS driver, I assume this will also get the chop.

These "improvements" are going to cost me quite a lot of money, it would appear.

This issue must affect a lot of Linux users.

Q. Why on earth cannot suitable legacy CUPS drivers remain available for such people, instead of rendering a whole host of hardware inoperable?

Those users can move onto new IPPEverywhere machines once their existing ones wear out.

hazel · 10-10-2023, 11:41 AM

This is the sort of behaviour one associates with Microsoft, not Linux developers! Remember when Windows Vista came in and everyone had to buy a new computer?

rclark · 10-10-2023, 12:07 PM

Quote:

...everyone had to buy a new computer?

Doesn't everyone anyway? At least the motherboard and CPU? You know, every couple years?

beachboy2 · 10-10-2023, 01:43 PM

According to https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups/wiki/CUPS-3.0

C-Day is sometime in November 2023 for CUPS 3.0.

hazel · 10-11-2023, 12:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rclark

Doesn't everyone anyway? At least the motherboard and CPU? You know, every couple years?

Young people do perhaps. I normally buy a new computer only when the old one becomes unusable. Why fix what ain't broke? Mind you, I did buy my present one https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...er-4175645931/ a few years ago on a whim. I saw it languishing in the window of my local Computer Exchange and it only cost £64, so I bought it.

With Windows, you really had to buy a new computer for every release from Vista onwards.

beachboy2 · 10-11-2023, 02:59 AM

Okay, this is my final question on this thread.

My Linux Mint 21.2 is supported until April 2027.

Q. Assuming that I block all CUPS-related updates on Mint from now until that date, will my current, non-IPPEverywhere, Brother HL-1112 printer continue to run perfectly?

Thanks to all who are following this topic.

business_kid · 10-11-2023, 03:29 AM

Why not take a backup of your system packages that work?

If they break it with a driver update (unlikely, imho) you can delete and install the old ones. Nobody's going to break loads of printers. Linux is not M$

hazel · 10-11-2023, 04:24 AM

You could always switch to Slackware. I can't see our Patrick going along with a thing like this. Look how long he waited before deciding that PAM was acceptable!

beachboy2 · 10-11-2023, 04:57 AM

@hazel,

Thanks for the recommendation of Slackware. Not my scene, I'm afraid. I will stick with Mint.

@business_kid,

Thanks.
I will do a backup of my installed packages.

michaelk · 10-11-2023, 05:52 AM

I would not expect Mint to automatically upgrade so you should be fine until 21 reaches EOL.

beachboy2 · 10-11-2023, 06:56 AM

@michaelk,

Yes, that is the way I see it, but I will still keep a close eye on all Mint updates.

beachboy2 · 10-11-2023, 05:08 PM

All may not be lost for Legacy printers such as my USB Brother HL-1112, since the CUPS developers have a forthcoming Legacy Printer Application which will hopefully cater for my needs and those of many other Linux users with non-IPPEverywhere printers.

The following links and extracts explain the situation.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtop...bc69f&start=20

Extract:

Quote:

As a postscript (no pun intended!) to this discussion, I think you will be interested to read this posting from one of the CUPS development team in response to the issue that I raised with them on GitHub. There's a hint in there of a migration path for legacy proprietary printer drivers. As I understand it, if any such drivers are installed on a system then they will be picked up by the forthcoming Legacy Printer Application in CUPS, so that they can still be used behind the new driverless front-end. It's unclear to me how transparent that process will be (i.e. what manual configuration changes will it require?), but it looks promising.

https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups...ent-1435337985

Extracts:

Quote:

For the future of CUPS 3.x not supporting classic CUPS drivers any more, we have already taken care:
• Drivers will still exist, but they will come in a new format, the Printer Applications which are software emulations of driverless IPP printers. Manufacturers are supposed to ship drivers in this format in the future.
• All free software classic CUPS drivers are already converted to Printer Applications and readily available in the Snap Store.
• For proprietary legacy CUPS drivers, like the one from Samsung, we have also a solution, the so-called Legacy Printer Application. It sees classically installed classic CUPS drivers, independent whether there is a classically installed CUPS 2.x on the system or not, and makes them available as Printer Application, so that CUPS 3.x sees and uses them.
So I hope this helps and that we from OpenPrinting are sustainable, keeping old printers working.

………………………………………….

Quote:

Regarding the Legacy Printer Application, I hope this understanding of mine is correct:
• The Legacy Printer Application can be packaged as a .deb.
• Non-free packages from Brother (say) can be installed and be set up in the Legacy Printer Application being used with CUPS 3.x.
• Should it desire, Brother is relieved of the responsibility to produce its own Printer Application.
• Free Epson drivers not catered for by gutenprinter-printer-app can be accessed after the printer-driver-escpr package is installed on Debian/Ubuntu.
• The situation with non-free drivers is basically no different from what it is now, just a single extra step. Install these drivers from the vendor and use the web interface of the Legacy Printer Application to set up a queue in the Application.

rknichols · 10-11-2023, 06:20 PM

I'll still be looking anxiously for what will happen with my legacy Panasonic KX-P1124i dot matrix printer on a parallel port connection. I have no other printer that can handle labels the way this printer can.

aus9 · 10-11-2023, 07:40 PM

Hi

Can I suggest 2 things for those wanting to future proof yourself

1) Learn how to compile cups/sane and depending on your distro.....remove the distro packages and only use your packages

2) Much easier....keep a live usb/cd that is old enough to have old cups/sane. When you want to print something,
remember where you save the target file....load up your usb distro and print

michaelk · 10-11-2023, 08:13 PM

2a) If you have the resources run an older distribution (cli only) as a virtual machine and then share the printer via cups. I also believe you can run sane over the network as well.