Ubuntu 11.10 & 11.04 To Support Apple AirPrint 67
kai_hiwatari writes "According to an email in the Ubuntu-Devel mailing list, AirPrint support is now available for Ubuntu 11.10 'Oneiric Ocelot' and Ubutnu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' as well — although it is in the testing phase for now. Developer Till Kamppeter sent an email to the mailing list inviting testers to test out his patch that enables AirPrint in Ubuntu."
In before... (Score:3, Funny)
...complaints about Unity
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LOL @ Anonymous Coward before you...
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So click the drop down and select gnome. Or install XFCE or install LXDE. How about you man up, change to another DM or distro and STFU.
I did not like it at first but use it at home, my work laptop cannot provide 3d and dual monitor support so I use gnome there.
How about a name that's pronouncable? (Score:2)
Dapper Drake was a fine name. So was Hardy Heron. But Oneiric Ocelot? Couldn't they have given it a slightly simpler name? Why not Old Ox or something?
Ubuntu on iPad? (Score:2)
So, now, if I put Ubuntu on my iPad, I can still print via AirPrint?
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So, now, if I put Ubuntu on my iPad, I can still print via AirPrint?
Why would you want to do that? If you really wanted more "unix" then you could jailbreak iOS. Installing Ubuntu makes no sense.
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Installing Ubuntu makes more sense than buying an iPad.
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it was an attempt at humor (Score:2)
Alas.
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yeah, it is a shame. i was just thinking the other day 'what a shame osgeld dropped ubuntu around v9'.
you know, you could always either 'pick it back up' if it 'will help a bunch'...
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Why thank you, I am flattered, but on your second point its a distro with packages and a gui installer, not magic.
Nothing much new here. (Score:4, Informative)
I've been doing this for months. Avahi can share any cups queue as an Airprint queue. I used this howto:
http://www.finnie.org/2010/11/13/airprint-and-linux/ [finnie.org]
There are also scripts that will autogenerate the Avahi service files for you. The only real new thing here might possibly be a better UI for doing this.
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The funny thing is that apple also uses cups for printing, right? x_x
It is more than that. Apple actually owns CUPS. They bought it in 2007 [cups.org]
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How long before they receive some legal love from Apple^h^h^h^h^h Steve?
You mean for developing a zeroconf implementation, with help from Apple engineers and referencing the open source implementation from Apple and the RFC Apple largely wrote? Or do you mean for integrating it with CUPS which is another open source project Apple currently funds and develops?
Apple wants the open source technologies they build their OS's on as widely adopted as possible because it makes their devices more useful, which sells more of them, which makes them more money. That's why Apple open source
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How long before they receive some legal love from Apple^h^h^h^h^h Steve?
Why, exactly, do you think they will?
I was almost really, really excited.... (Score:1)
Fewer drivers (Score:4, Informative)
What does this allow that simply connecting to wifi and printing to a networked printer on the same wifi network can't do?
Basically, fewer drivers involved, a somewhat higher level abstraction for the printer.
The practical use is that from any iPad/Touch/iPhone device, they can discover and print to that print queue. So if you have any of those devices and are using a Linux box as a print server, this would be very handy...
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DRIVERS KIDS, Drivers
Windows has let the proliferation of OEM drivers grow as a way to keep market share. I mean we had PCL, PS, and PDF printing almost a decade ago. But printers get dumber and dumber. I work with AS400 and the system outputs stock PCL... yet no printer under $500 talks that any more. Now that folks have iPads more powerful than their computer 5 years ago they think they should print... Without wires, or drivers. Imagine printing the same spool file to DIFFERENT printers!!! Woah!
I'd like
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What does this allow that simply connecting to wifi and printing to a networked printer on the same wifi network can't do?
Zeroconf and simplified drivers. This makes network printing about as effortless as is technologically possible.
All I need to know: (Score:2)
When will this be merged upstream, if ever? Some of us that use Fedora, OpenSUSE, Arch, and Debian would benefit from this as well.
AirPrint = IPP + Zeroconf/DNS-SD (Score:5, Informative)
"AirPrint" is just a fancy name for what is basically networked printing using the IPP protocol, with automatic discovery of available printers with zeroconf (using DNS-DS).
The linux solution uses Avahi for the zeroconf discovery part, and CUPS for the IPP printing service.
- CUPS can be a vanilla version, as long as the printer is supported.
- Avahi needs to be manually configured, in order to output the few extra data which is required for an iDevice to recognise it as a AirPrint and list it as a possible printing target.
Upstream merging shouldn't be too troublesome. Expect AirPort appearing in the next iteration of distros.
As mentionned elsewhere among the discussion, what would really be needed is a nice interface to help do this configuration. I suspect that openSUSE's YaST will do a nice job here, as usual.
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Thanks, that's all I needed to know. Very informative!
What is AirPrint exactly? (Score:3)
With the support for AirPrint, it will now be possible to use an Ubuntu system as a server to allow a printer, that is not compatible with AirPrint, to print using AirPrint.
So what is AirPrint? Is it software made by Apple which can somehow now run on Ubuntu to support printing over wifi? And how does an incompatible printer suddenly become compatible because of Ubuntu?
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So what is AirPrint?
The service that provides printing to i$stuff
And how does an incompatible printer suddenly become compatible because of Ubuntu?
Because it can expose any printer as an airprint device. It basically supplies a generic airprint device, and then prints the data it gets to the printer you already own.
I am no sure you are aware of this, but there is a new website that can help you with questions like this. It can be found at http://google.com/ [google.com] , all these and many other questions can be answer
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its wifi printing over apples BS, it only matters if your an airport user with an apple printer and accessories
or in other words less than a percentage of your typical apple user cause its on linux and was not installed by a genius
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Well, actually, the whole point of TFA is that you can now use it with an AirPrint client (e.g., an iOS device like an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch) without the rest of Apple's stack of supporting gadgetry if you have an Ubuntu system and any printer that the Ubuntu system can drive.
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It is in fact the total reverse of what you just said. You can now share a non-Airprint compatible printer using a non-Apple machine serving (ie, Ubuntu in this case) so that your iPhone/iPod/iPad can't tell the difference.
It's hardly surprising, given that Apple uses (and maintains) CUPS and is very fond of zeroconf.
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...yet despite this never bothered to include CUPS in PhoneOS directly.
Instead you have to go through extra uneccessary contortions and proprietary nonsense.
This Ubuntu patch is for dealing with something that Apple does that is gratuitiously proprietary.
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Obviously not, since it's trivial to enable for non-Apple devices, and Apple gets to "keep the weight down" on iOS. Have you seen the size of the printer drivers folder in OS X?
Leave that to the desktop machine, and put something streamlined in iOS. Basing it on CUPS (like their whole print system) just makes it easy to interoperate. "Gratuitously proprietary" would have been to make it use some totally secret, non-standard, very-difficult-to-reverse-engineer protocol, instead of say... zeroconf and CUPS.
Gu
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...yet despite this never bothered to include CUPS in PhoneOS directly.
You mean unlike Google in Android. Oh, wait....
But at least there is general support for printing in Android. Wait, what?
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Wow. There's hardly a single thing in this post that isn't 100%, no-questions-about-it, false.
...yet despite this never bothered to include CUPS in PhoneOS directly.
What do you think AirPrint uses? Do you mean that you think Apple should have, instead of making it absolutely *simple* to print to any AirPrint printer, exposed the user to a printer settings panel, and allowed installation of third party drivers, which can take up hundreds of megabytes, on iOS devices?
Really?
Instead you have to go through extra uneccessary contortions and proprietary nonsense.
There is absolutely nothing proprietary about AirPrint. And "extra unnecessary contortions" is the exact
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Right, because Windows smartphones have printing? Mine don't.
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For older, or incompatible printers, software such as Printopia for Mac allows you to share a printer and 'advertise' it as AirPrint-compatible.
From what I can tell someone just built something like Printopia for Ubuntu.
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Basically, allow you to print to a printer hooked up to an Ubuntu PC from your iPod/iPhone/iPad.
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AirPrint is a protocol for driving printers over networks, largely intended to allow printing from iOS devices like the iPad or iPhone (it may or may not be usable from other devices, as well.) The Ubuntu software components involved presumably act as a server for AirPrint and then send the actual print job to t
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Airprint, like so many Apple services, is a specific configuration of open-standard protocols, APIs, etc. that they've given a a proprietary name to, while trying to convince customers that they've created something unique and proprietary.
I guess they've judged more of their customers value "unique and proprietary" over "universal". And that those who value the latter "get the joke".
Other examples of Apple "proprietary" technology that isn't include FaceTime and iMessage.
I find it amusing when some "hacker"
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Airprint, like so many Apple services, is a specific configuration of open-standard protocols, APIs, etc. that they've given a a proprietary name to, while trying to convince customers that they've created something unique and proprietary.
While I agree that there might be many Apple services that fit that bill, there are also other ones that have only basic support on things like Ubuntu because the protocols are (AFAIK) truly closed and proprietary, such as AirPlay [wikipedia.org].
The problem with a lot of these widgety things (whether from Apple or Microsoft or whomever), is that someone buys one of them and then requires all of their underlings (or sidelings, if they're just at the same level in the ladder) to use this item, often by downloading some prop
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Airprint, like so many Apple services, is a specific configuration of open-standard protocols, APIs, etc. that they've given a a proprietary name to, while trying to convince customers that they've created something unique and proprietary.
Um, no. They generally make a specific *point* of noting that they are using open standards. AirPrint uses two of Apple's own open projects: zeroconf and CUPS.
Other examples of Apple "proprietary" technology that isn't include FaceTime and iMessage.
Um... When Apple introduced FaceTime, they made a specific point about how it was built on open standards, and that they were going to fully release the specs soon. It's been over a year now and they still haven't made good on that last part.
As for iMessage, that's the only example of the bunch where Apple didn't make any mention of it being open. The
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Zeroconf is just a discovery service - it's not a printing protocol.
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Zeroconf is just a discovery service - it's not a printing protocol.
That's exactly my point. In that specific section I was replying to, jtara was talking about zeroconf as though Apple were deliberately breaking/modding/extending/whatever the standard by identifying printers as specifically being AirPrint printers. I was explaining the reason.
AirPrint = IPP + zeroconf (Score:4, Informative)
So what is AirPrint?
"AirPrint" is just a fancy name for what is basically networked printing using the IPP protocol, with automatic discovery of available printers with zeroconf.
IPP is simply provided by regular CUPS versions under Linux (nothing new here).
As mentioned by others, the zeroconf is done by Avahi under linux and a couple of extra fields need to be provided, so an apple device can recognise an avahi-advertised printing queue as "AirPrint".
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Um me, but I am a nerd
my apple computer is old enough it wont run much more than 10.2 and since its my electronics workbench computer now I need lots of nixie software and tools, really dont care much at all for running such an obsolete apple OS while doing it, and linux performs much better on the same hardware
so why wouldnt I, oh thats right! apple says I need a new 6 core 5 billion hz 90 gig of ram monster running 10.100 to operate a text editor and command line, I am a bad little sheep...
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iDevices are showing up in organizations now. So IT has a way to serve their print queues to them.
You don't need a patch for this (Score:3)
You just need a properly-configured service file for avahi. There are a couple of fields that are required for Airprint. For reference, here's the printer.service file I've been using. The URF and PDL text records, as well as the tag are needed to keep Airprint happy.
Samsung CLP-550 on %h
_ipp._tcp
_universal._sub._ipp._tcp
631
txtver=1
qtotal=1
rp=printers/CLP-550
ty=Samsung CLP-550 Printer
adminurl=http://colossus.local:631/printers/CLP-550
note=Samsung CLP-550
priority=0
product=virtual Printer
printer-state=3
printer-type=0x801046
Transparent=T
Binary=T
Fax=F
Color=T
Duplex=T
Staple=F
Copies=T
Collate=F
Punch=F
Bind=F
Sort=F
Scan=F
pdl=application/octet-stream,application/pdf,application/postscript,image/jpeg,image/png,image/urf
URF=W8,SRGB24,CP1,RS600
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Oops, sorry, slashdot ate my XML:
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FYI, Cloud Print service (Score:2)
$ git clone https://github.com/armooo/cloudprint.git
Cloning into cloudprint...
remote: Counting objects: 109, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (107/107), done.
remote: Total 109 (delta 47), reused 0 (delta 0)
Receiving objects: 100% (109/109), 31.77 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (47/47), done.
$ cd cloudprint
$ root python setup.py install
[snip]
$ root pip-python install daemon
Downloading/unpacking daemon
Running setup.py egg_info for package daemon
Installing collected packages:
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How can you print to a Cloud Print printer from Linux? I recently bought a HP printer that has Cloud Print built in and I can print from my Android devices just fine. Printing from my work desktop to home would be nice without having to set up SSH port forwarding or whatnot.
Ubutnu... (Score:1)
Sounds yummy for some reason.
Apple does own CUPS (Score:2)
The good thing about this is that it seems Apple has based AirPrint on existing standards implemented in Free tools. What's odd is that other people are adding this functionality on to CUPS rather than it being released as part of CUPS itself. Apple bought CUPS from Easy Software Products. Though Apple has kept the CUPS going as a Free Software project mostly under GPL and LGPL, they can keep additions they write proprietary if they choose.
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The main reason this isn't in CUPS proper is that it's not even in CUPS on the Mac. This is presumed to be due to a lawsuit (or threat of lawsuit) from someone who holds a patent on network printing that caused Apple to pull AirPrint sharing on OS X at the last minute. There's a small workaround available, but Apple seems to think it's not a feature they can legally provide themselves.
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what are you talking about? http://localhost:631/ [localhost] opens the cups page.
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What are you talking about? I didn't say CUPS isn't in OS X, I said AirPrint isn't enabled on OS X as a server like was planned (and like this story allows Ubuntu to do).
Not surpising (Score:2)