CUPS Printing System Open-Source Development Has Seemingly Dried Up

[aht0]

First things first: I never use store client cards, and I refuse to buy any product which requires ID cards. Thankfully, I do not drink or I would have to brew my own(as I do computers, bicycles, etc). If I am out of my home area, I conduct all economic transactions cash-only. If I am riding in someone else's vehicle, no record will ever exist that I was even there. No, I do not use a phone registered in my name, so tracking that would require merging several different databases, and using the results in any court would require publicly admitting to doing so.

I do NOT have a passport, for these among other reasons. I do not live in the EU and thus am not subject to any European law. Their laws can no more reach me than Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws or China's Internet laws. For all the evils coming from the US government, for someone in my position there are a lot of benefits to living in a failing state.

In the US, state borders are not international borders and have no controls except for heavy trucks (agricultural) and some covid stuff on (controllable) air travellers. When I was a covid refugee in March 2020, I easily evaded Florida's illegal checkpoint on I-95 by adding 300 miles to the trip to enter from another direction, and crossed the border on a minor road as a further precaution. Nobody knew how this shit would evolve, but the checkpoint in the end came down quickly due to massive truck traffic delays threatening food delivery. In the US, uprisings from both ends of the political spectrum have since put any further hard lockdowns close to all the way off the table.

Also in the US, even in the (dangerous due to CPB/ICE) border regions there is no actual law requiring posession of ID. Cops will ALWAYS lie and say there is, but this is a lie if you are not the driver of a motor vehicle and not flying. I never fly or enter ID-requiring buildings. Police will ask for documents but courts have consistantly ruled it legal to refuse to provide them, unless CBP/ICE can prove you are a migrant. In that case, you have to choose: further into hostile light, or further into the shadows. Otherwise, grow some courage and stand up to police harassment!

If I ever have to travel internationally it will require illegal crossings at every border, same as it is for a large portion of the total population of Earth. Not everyone qualifies for official/approved International travel anywhere.

I speak as someone who successfully defied a US grand jury subpeona and got away with it, forcing them to drop the case by burning the subpeona in front of the courthouse with 20+ supporters behind me. Note that these witch-hunts are legal only in the US and Liberia, one of the negatives of this country along with extreme disparities of wealth and extreme racism and classism. Best positive is that a heavily-armed public (comparable to Afghanistan) seriously constrains the government's options here.

IMHO, you have obsessive paranoia. See psychiatrist.
You want to live in organized society but are ready to completely disregard its laws because such happen to run contrary to your ideas.

[stiiixy]

Always interesting reading, Luke. Thought you'd skipped the planet!

[Luke]

You already do have national ID in the form of internationally recognized passport. We do have also identity card - which btw works as a passport within EU (during travels into members state I don't need to have my passport along with me, ID card is enough). Nobody is stamping passports anyway. Inside EU there usually are not even any borders.

Arrest for refusing to show ID illegal? Police, border guards (on EU external border) have rights to ask for your documents. More, near border carrying some form of ID (be it even driver license) is mandatory.

Fucking ID card makes it also much easier to authenticate one's self against banks, state services etc, it has replaced client cards for stores - wallet is no longer full with 50 different cards. Only private info readable from it without you inputting PINs is your citizen's/resident's unique serial no.

Last I heard about US banks was that they release their client their own ID tokens and if you lose'm.. Well, you are fucked, unless you get somebody to witness that you are who you say you are and who will be responsible for you. Or smth completely brain dead like this.

First things first: I never use store client cards, and I refuse to buy any product which requires ID cards. Thankfully, I do not drink or I would have to brew my own(as I do computers, bicycles, etc). If I am out of my home area, I conduct all economic transactions cash-only. If I am riding in someone else's vehicle, no record will ever exist that I was even there. No, I do not use a phone registered in my name, so tracking that would require merging several different databases, and using the results in any court would require publicly admitting to doing so.

I do NOT have a passport, for these among other reasons. I do not live in the EU and thus am not subject to any European law. Their laws can no more reach me than Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws or China's Internet laws. For all the evils coming from the US government, for someone in my position there are a lot of benefits to living in a failing state.

In the US, state borders are not international borders and have no controls except for heavy trucks (agricultural) and some covid stuff on (controllable) air travellers. When I was a covid refugee in March 2020, I easily evaded Florida's illegal checkpoint on I-95 by adding 300 miles to the trip to enter from another direction, and crossed the border on a minor road as a further precaution. Nobody knew how this shit would evolve, but the checkpoint in the end came down quickly due to massive truck traffic delays threatening food delivery. In the US, uprisings from both ends of the political spectrum have since put any further hard lockdowns close to all the way off the table.

Also in the US, even in the (dangerous due to CPB/ICE) border regions there is no actual law requiring posession of ID. Cops will ALWAYS lie and say there is, but this is a lie if you are not the driver of a motor vehicle and not flying. I never fly or enter ID-requiring buildings. Police will ask for documents but courts have consistantly ruled it legal to refuse to provide them, unless CBP/ICE can prove you are a migrant. In that case, you have to choose: further into hostile light, or further into the shadows. Otherwise, grow some courage and stand up to police harassment!

If I ever have to travel internationally it will require illegal crossings at every border, same as it is for a large portion of the total population of Earth. Not everyone qualifies for official/approved International travel anywhere.

I speak as someone who successfully defied a US grand jury subpeona and got away with it, forcing them to drop the case by burning the subpeona in front of the courthouse with 20+ supporters behind me. Note that these witch-hunts are legal only in the US and Liberia, one of the negatives of this country along with extreme disparities of wealth and extreme racism and classism. Best positive is that a heavily-armed public (comparable to Afghanistan) seriously constrains the government's options here.

[SystemCrasher]

Apple is toxic for opensource ppl I guess. Sure, they throw some source dumps here and there - but it doesn't makes opensource community.

[printman]

So we still need CUPS. I was hoping that we could finally be rid of this layer...

Yes, CUPS handles spooling and conversion of print files to a format the printer will accept. Most printers can only print a single file at a time and don't support the full range of formats used on Linux.

[Sonadow]

As it supports Apple® AirPrint® and Mopria® Print Service it works with as driverless IPP printers. These are two of the 4 driverless IPP flavors. This means that on a standard distro (using CUPS and cups-browsed) it often simply sets up automatically. If not, you can easily set it up with the CUPS web interface or system-config-printer. Under the discovered printers your printer model should appear under the network printers, as IPP printer. Then under the drivers, if you get offered to choose one, select the "driverless" one.

Scanning works starting from SANE 1.0.29, with the "escl"backend, or if you get the separate "sane-airscan" backend (you find in on GitHub, binaries for all major distros are available). And the upcoming Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy) supports even sending faxes (if the device supports it).

Till

So we still need CUPS. I was hoping that we could finally be rid of this layer...

[Till Kamppeter]

I'm looking at the Canon imageCLASS LBP623Cdw.

The product claims to support Canon PRINT Business, Canon Print Service, Google Cloud Print™, Apple® AirPrint®, Mopria® Print Service

Does this mean I can use this printer for wireless and driverless printing in Linux without CUPS? If so, how should I go about doing it?

As it supports Apple® AirPrint® and Mopria® Print Service it works with as driverless IPP printers. These are two of the 4 driverless IPP flavors. This means that on a standard distro (using CUPS and cups-browsed) it often simply sets up automatically. If not, you can easily set it up with the CUPS web interface or system-config-printer. Under the discovered printers your printer model should appear under the network printers, as IPP printer. Then under the drivers, if you get offered to choose one, select the "driverless" one.

Scanning works starting from SANE 1.0.29, with the "escl"backend, or if you get the separate "sane-airscan" backend (you find in on GitHub, binaries for all major distros are available). And the upcoming Ubuntu 20.10 (Groovy) supports even sending faxes (if the device supports it).

Till

[Sonadow]

First of all, you should look for driverless IPP printers. As AirPrint (the method iPhones use to print) is a flavor of driverless IPP printing and Linux also supports this flavor, simply look for AirPrint-capable devices. Other flavors are IPP Everywhere, Mopria, and Wi-Fi Direct Print, but they are less often advertised. They are also supported by Linux. And if you go with a multi-function device, if it does driverless IPP in some form it also offers driverless scanning and IPP Fax Out. So you get everything working.
All the existing legacy free software drivers will get converted into Printer Applications soon and we have even started working on concepts to wrap proprietary classic drivers into Printer Applications.
The printer manufacturers (at least most of them) are organized in the Printing Working Group (PWG) and the standards like IPP come from this group. OpenPrinting and the PWG work closely together and we have an annual meeting. So the manufacturers are aware of the deprecation and soon removal of PPDs and the new standard way of Printer Applications.

Till

I'm looking at the Canon imageCLASS LBP623Cdw

The product claims to support Canon PRINT Business, Canon Print Service, Google Cloud Print™, Apple® AirPrint®, Mopria® Print Service

Does this mean I can use this printer for wireless and driverless printing in Linux without CUPS? If so, how should I go about doing it?

Best thing I ever did was to get a decent, multifunction b/w laser printer/scanner unit (Brother DCP-7055). Toner is very cheap, does not dry and laser prints very quickly. If I were to replace it I'd basically like a network-enabled version of it. I'm not sure what the state of network scanners is in Linux though.

I have a HP scanner/printer, works well with Xsane. I may have used Skanlite with it too.

[aht0]

Speaking of National ID card's, something we Aussies have been toying with since, what, the 80's? what are the ACTUAL negative's regarding them? REAL security issues, caveats. How are existing system's implemented and some of their negatives, and if 'the system' was exposed, what would be leaked. How, and what are all the bonuses? If EU nations are doing it, with their added extra layer of EUness to boot, surely we (with NZ/PNG?) could implement something similar.

Actual negatives? IF there is security vulnerability in smartcards themselves, it may lead to mass-replacement of ID cards while at the same time access to e-services is disabled. It may also lead to stolen or hacked ID's used electronically. Former has happened, latter cases I am not aware of. It's principally using public/private key pairs, nothing experimental.

3 years a go some scientist found vulnerability/weakness (cant recall, might have been done lack of sufficient randomness) in certificates of certain series of issued ID cards and it almost toppled government because initially it was covered up (starting from smartcard vendor who tried to claim there was no vulnerability) while government agency responsible tried to work around the issue. Overall it was first case of to do with security vulnerabilities over nearly 2 decades of use.

Final result: Bunch of ID cards had to be replaced, everybody had to generate new certificates and government changed the vendor of smartcards. People who did not re-generate new certificates had their smartcards stop working with government e-services. Such still remain valid as normal non-electronic documents until expiration.

Another negative: voting system is pretty transparent but cannot avoid cases where someone with another's ID at hand would cast a vote not his/her own. Doesn't have to mean stolen ID - might be elder care homes, where leadership is tasked with holding the documents of their patients. Few cases have surfaced where suspiciously votes from some care home unerringly go to to director of same, who's participating on elections.