[cups.general] Cups DOWN-grading?

[Michael Sweet]

gg,

On Feb 15, 2012, at 12:11 PM, ginganz <rh at ffpx.de> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> is ist true, what heise.de writes at
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/CUPS-1-6-unterstuetzt-Linux-schlechter-1435234.html
> 
> and especially at
> 
> http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Kernel-Log-Apple-verschlankt-Cups-1435037.html
> 
> That cups is downgrading its features for LINUX???


Well, if I could actually read German I might be able to comment more specifically, however there are two key changes in CUPS 1.6 that these articles *might* be talking about:

1. Linux-only print backends/filters have moved out of the core CUPS distribution and are now being maintained and developed by the Open Printing project (Linux Foundation) - Linux users won't see a difference.

2. CUPS Browsing (UDP broadcasts over port 631) is no longer supported in CUPS 1.6, replaced by Bonjour (DNS-SD, ZeroConf, and mDNS).  This has been coming for a long time - it only ever worked well for small networks with well-known hostnames for the "server" systems, and UDP broadcasts over Wi-Fi have a serious performance impact on the performance/bandwidth that is available, not to mention wasted power for portable devices...  This mainly affects people that use BrowsePoll and/or implicit classes for load balancing - regular printer sharing will continue to work, just using a different protocol for finding and using the printers.

__________________________________________________
Michael Sweet, Senior Printing System Engineer, PWG Chair