![]() #BONJOUR BROWSER LINUX WINDOWS#Eh? This too? Don’t me, it wasn’t my idea.Īnd it gets even funnier: your Linux or Windows client itself is a “print server”, too, since there’s virtually no difference functionality-wise, it’s just that we pick one dedicated machine to be the “central” print server. It also makes sense because you then have a central place for accounting purposes, any additional processing that might be deemed necessary such as watermarking printouts and most of all so you have one place to cancel jobs instead of potentially dozens. So it makes sense to have only one client at any time actually spooling data to the printer. The printer is likely to simply block and ignore data from a second client when it’s currently busy processing the first client’s job. At least not if you’re not the only one using that printer. Spooling is also required since you may want to print multiple documents as once and these print jobs need to be processed one after another to avoid them getting mixed up.īut also: no, you can not. Spooling is required because, unless you discover some larger storage device such as a HDD or SSD in your printer, it requires documents to be pre-rendered to the printer’s native language and served piece-by-piece. Because whatever client you print from is likely to implement spooling of jobs to the printer. But what functionality exactly? If my printer has a LAN port, I can just print to it directly, no? Prices fell and nowadays most printers except the cheapest ones have this functionality integrated. This was called a “print server”, which, for some printers such as the legendary HP LaserJet 4/5/6 (yes, there was a time when HP wasn’t crap), could often also be retrofitted later in special slots. Look kids, back then in the stone ages affordable printers (and I will assume you know what a printer is, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this) outside the Enterprise segment didn’t have network connectivity built-in and you had to augment them with devices like this one: Hewlett-Packard JetDirect 170X print server with LAN and parallel ports (Photo © Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons) “Print what”? Let’s briefly detour… A print server, a print server and a print server go into a bar… CUPS was going to make things more convenient and also bring with it new features such as browsing that would eventually turn out to be especially useful on print servers. #BONJOUR BROWSER LINUX SOFTWARE#Let’s go back to the beginning of the 2000s: Printing under Linux/Unix was a mess but a new savior on the horizon, CUPS (The “Common Unix Printing System”), developed by Michael Sweet of Easy Software Products, saw the light of day to change this. Not saying that you fell for clickbait but this is going to be a quite opinionated piece that didn’t go anywhere next to the scrutiny a LWN article would have gone and merely represents a summary of my findings on this particular topic so far. ![]()
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