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> This is why printers are hell. You have a much of communication protocols but you need per-device drivers to interface with them over that protocol. It doesn't matter that we have ipp, because for over six years driverless printing has been in draft hell[1].

Business idea! A device that plugs into your printer (or network) and exposes it as a "more compatible" printer on the same network! Yes it's silly that you'd need a separate device to do this, but it would allow for having a clean implementation of IPP exposed (so no more hacks or backwards compatibility issues). Maybe a custom OS build atop a Rasberry Pi for a proof of concept.

I would definitely buy one. Spending $50 on something like that to save hours upon hours of wasted time setting up Linux printers.




If you have a Mac on your network OS X exposes it as a generic PS printer and translates locally. Works very well.

I keep an old Mac mini around largely for this and NAS playback.




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