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Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

… unless you’re running Linux (or macOS, perhaps?) on a desktop or laptop and print something.

I’m pretty sure that even in 2024 printing is pretty common, isn’t it?

… isn’t it?

I think tech people underestimate how much people want to print things. My wife is printing stuff all the time. Proofreading things on physical paper is better than on a screen. You read more carefully and catch more mistakes.

This. Bonus: We must print. Shipping labels, things which require an actual signature. And so on. And sometimes I want just hang the paper on a wall. Maybe the next print says

    “Dear macOS users. You’re vulnerable, too. Update now!”

Computers aren’t made to avoid printing. Their task is printing faster on more paper. At least this is what happened ^^

Rereading things works better when they look different, even superficially. Have you ever noticed a bug or typo immediately on a Gerrit/GitHub/etc. code review submission page that you previously overlooked a dozen times in your editor?

And scribbling on paper is still unparallelled as a thinking device for rearranging things, catching repetitive turns of phrase, and the like. A tablet with a pen works to some extent, but I cannot surround myself with tablets showing parts of the same document like I can with sheets of paper, and that’s helpful for long-form texts. No word processor with mouse-and-keyboard input can compare.

In the other thread about this it was mentioned macOS and many flavors of Linux don’t install the specific package or invoke cupsd as needed and shut it down when printing is complete. The instructions given in the article state they’re just tuning off the network discovery package for CUPS.

CUPS isn't required for printing on *nix, and even if you use it, cups-browsed isn't required. If you need to "discover" the printers on your network, something is probably wrong, as in my experience public printers are always labeled with the relevant information and home printers can print or show that information on their menus.

> If you need to "discover" the printers on your network, something is probably wrong, as in my experience public printers are always labeled with the relevant information and home printers can print or show that information on their menus.

This is a terrible take. The average user is not going to go find out the IP of the printer and go on their computer and configure it. Discovery is the primary way people print now.

And... CUPS is how 99% of people print on Mac or Linux.

What alternatives are there to CUPS when it comes to printing?

And yea sure you can manually configure your printer, but it's a pain in the ass compared to zeroconf auto-discovery.

I just use lpr or netcat if I haven't written a printcap on a system.

How would I do that from a browser?

Your browser probably reads printcap to get the printers already. So, the same way you already print from the browser. You can also print to pdf and then send the pdf to the printer from the commandline.

this article appears to be geared towards linux on a server rather than a desktop

Author here. Any randomly selected Linux machine is more likely to be a server than it is a desktop.

True. Linux machines don't read articles though, people do. Whether any randomly selected linux-using reader will have cups installed on a device they control is a very different question.

Any randomly selected Linux machine is most likely to be a mobile phone, statistically speaking

I'm pretty Android doesn't use CUPS, and most people that use Android don't consider themselves Linux users. I think it's okay.

Are you sure there are more Android phones than Linux servers?

I don't think there's a way to check for sure but I'd say that's pretty likely. There are billions of android devices, and Linux servers, while popular, are probably less common just because servers are less common than consumer devices in general. But maybe I'm wrong!

The only time I print something is at work and even that is rare.

Popos (out-of-the-box): cupsd running, but on 127.0.0.1.

The one to check is cups-browsed

not really

I mean it depends a bit on your living situation.

I mean at jobs (e.g. self employed) you have to sometimes print things I guess often enough for it to be a viable attack.

And as a student if you might also sometimes prefer paper, but most universities have printer pools you mostly use over USB and that is just way cheaper then your own printer.

Sure if you play games like D&D you might print character sheets (or templates for them) but how often?

I think the last time I had to print anything was when I sold my car like 7 years ago (doesn't make sense to own one where I live).

And sure not everyone will have that experience but the combination of run Linux + has network discovery enabled and "publicly" accessible (i.e. no strict firewall) + uses a printer over the network before it's fixed + gets attacked with it seems not "that" high, actually as long as the fix is delivered quite fast and it wasn't abused for years it seem quite unlikely.

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