Legacy printers and the new driverless IPP printing architecture

beachboy2 · 10-13-2023, 09:41 AM

I recently asked whether my Legacy printer would be supported under the new driverless Internet Printing Protocol (IPP):
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...pp-4175729700/

CUPS 3.0 is due in November 2023 and it will no longer support existing classic CUPS printer drivers such as these for Brother (brother-lpr-drivers-laser, brother-cups-wrapper-laser, printer-driver-brlaser).

However, at the same time, Legacy Printer Applications should be made available in order that older Legacy printers will still continue to function under IPP.

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

Extract:

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 Legacy 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.

Further information:
IPP-the new printing architecture demo by Till Kamppeter, project lead for the OpenPrinting Project:
https://conf.linuxappsummit.org/even...cture-demo.pdf

I am sticking to my original plan of blocking all CUPS-related updates on my main desktop PC (possibly until April 2027 when Linux Mint 21.2 support ends).

In addition, on my spare laptop, also running Mint, I will allow the CUPS 3.0 update (including the Legacy Printer Application?).

I will then connect my Brother HL-1112 printer and test whether it works.

If it does, then I will allow the CUPS 3.0 update on my main desktop PC.

I hope this information is of use to all LQ members using Legacy printers.

hazel · 10-13-2023, 09:48 AM

It's not going to be a problem on Slackware, not for a while anyway. Slackware-15 uses cups-2.4.6 and Slackware-current uses 2.4.7.

beachboy2 · 10-13-2023, 10:51 AM

hazel,

What about all the other non-Slackware Linux users with Legacy printers?

hazel · 10-13-2023, 11:04 AM

Yes, I notice that all yours belong to the Debian family. It will be a problem for Red Hat/Fedora users too. And of course for all the bleeding edge distros like Arch and Gentoo. To my mind, there's something rather unLinuxlike about this attempt to hustle us into the future.

My little laptop will probably go EOL soon enough as it needs the openchrome video driver which Debian has deprecated. Fortunately AntiX still provides it. AntiX and MX have their own cups build btw, as they don't want to incorporate systemd, so you could try using those rather than Mint.

beachboy2 · 10-13-2023, 12:24 PM

hazel,

Thanks for the info.

I could use MX Linux instead of Linux Mint, but I have been using Mint as my regular distro for so long that I have become very attached to it.

I can almost operate it blindfolded.

In any event, I am prepared to let the CUPS developers have a good stab at making sure that IPP also caters for Legacy printers.

I will wait to see how things pan out with driverless IPP and my Brother HL-1112 in the course of time.

beachboy2 · 10-17-2023, 09:24 AM

We appear to be currently using CUPS 2.4.1 and are still awaiting CUPS 2.5.

Open Printing seems to running behind schedule, so don't expect CUPS 3.0 to appear next month as promised.

Further info:
https://lpc.events/event/16/contribu...-cups-2022.pdf