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Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 2,020  

CUPS 3.0 and printer drivers

Hello:

Searching for a way to disable wifi in my Samsung/HP printer, I have been doing the rounds visiting whichever relevant printer pages I could find and found out that it seems CUPS 3.0 is now being rolled out.

This is important because from CUPS 3.0 onwards only IPP type (driverless) printers will work with CUPS.

Way to go Till Kamppeter/Michael Sweet!
And whoever else actually thought this was a good idea. 8^/
Probably the Ubuntu crowd ...

See:
https://openprinting.github.io/current/
https://openprinting.github.io/driverless/
https://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/forum/index.php?msg=1758

Check here to see if your printer is supported:
https://openprinting.org/printers

If your printer is not on the list, consider yourself screwed.
Thoroughly.

One obvious option would be to pin CUPS to the latest available version (CUPS 2.4.16?), which is what I plan to do before anything else, which does not include buying another printer.

There is another option involving a the splix driver.
See: https://github.com/OpenPrinting/splix/ 

Driver for SPL2 and SPLc laser printers from Samsung, Xerox, Dell, Lexmark, and Toshiba

Support for printing to SPL2- and SPLc-based printers. These are most of the cheaper laser printers from Samsung, but also rebranded ones from Xerox, Dell, Lexmark, and Toshiba. This driver is especially for those models not understanding standard languages like PostScript or PCL.

Both monochrome (ML-15xx, ML-16xx, ML-17xx, ML-18xx, ML-2xxx) and color (CLP-5xx, CLP-6xx) models are supported, and also their rebranded equivalents like the Xerox Phaser 6100 work with this driver.

Note that older SPL1-based models (ML-12xx, ML-14xx) do not work. Use these printers with the older "gdi" driver which is built into GhostScript.

See installation instructions in the INSTALL file.

The driver was created by Aurélien Croc (aurelien at ap2c dot org) and contains many contributions from Till Kamppeter (till dot kamppeter at gmail dot com). Development is discontinued as most modern printers do not need drivers any more.

Seems complicated.

I wonder if I could put the RPi3B+ I threw in a drawer last year back in service and turn it into a print server to work with the M2020W? Using the USB cable, not wireless.

Food for thought.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (Today 14:05:04)

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 651  

Re: CUPS 3.0 and printer drivers

altoid,
have used a rpi-2 some time as printer-server, but for serving the ethernet connection, since printer would stop printing if a print job is sent and then would reboot OS or similar;
with rpi-2 print-server, could send the job to the rpi, and it would take care of the job, albeit slowly, indipendently of the OS on the computer;
with better printer that have a memory for printing jobs, this is obivoulsy not needed;

the rpi3+ (have one too) function even bettter, faster, but then you have the dislike of manually disable the AP on the Rpi3+, which is obviously not ideal solution (since it can be turned on by someone remotely);

but it should function also over USB, aslong you don't use the lastest?? of CUPS;
share your concern with the "foolishness" of making it IPP-only, but over at debian someone said that the companies are in on it, so it should be a good thing?

not sure how this will evolve; for myself,  i like things being kept simple; and for the moment, the IPP thing has not convinced me; the installation of IPP driver has been even more troublesome than USB on Devuan for the Ecotank printer (used it for some time when could not get the printer otherwise to function);

would not be surprised if the printing stopped function with it if you are "offline" mode, but that hopefully the companies will make sure that doesn't happen.

a good usb-only printer is certainly a good investment, would argue (one ricoh have in basement has usb and ethernet connection, which is very comfortable set of function).