OpenPrinting Releases CUPS 2.4 With AirPrint, OAuth 2.0 Support

Earlier this year OpenPrinting took over development of the CUPS print server with Apple no longer interested in handling the future development of this open-source Linux/macOS/Unix/Solaris print server. Out this week is CUPS 2.4 as the first major release under the guidance of OpenPrinting.

Apple's work on CUPS ceased pretty much when CUPS founder Michael Sweet left Apple originally acquiring it back in 2007. Apple is no longer actively developing CUPS but has even contracted Sweet to backport important OpenPrinting CUPS fixes back to Apple's CUPS code-base.

OpenPrinting's CUPS 2.4 brings a heck of a lot of improvements to this widely-used print server including:

- Initial OAuth 2.0 client support.

- Support for AirPrint and Mopria clients.

- Support for running CUPS confined as a Snap.

- Various improvements to ipptool like JSON output and other features.

- The USB back-end now runs as root.

- Dozens of bug fixes and other minor improvements throughout.

CUPS 2.4 is quite a hearty update -- CUPS 2.3 released in 2019 after a three year span since CUPS 2.2. CUPS 2.4 can be downloaded in source form from GitHub.

Meanwhile CUPS 2.5 and CUPS 3.0 are already in planning with the renewed interest in it by the open-source community.