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Driverless printing (and scanning) in Bullseye

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FreewheelinFrank
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Driverless printing (and scanning) in Bullseye

#1 Post by FreewheelinFrank »

If you are asking yourself "How do I install drivers for my printer and scanner in Debian?", stop and read this first.

Debian 11 now supports driverless printing and scanning, and you may well find your printer or scanner will work without a driver.

Driverless printing "allows personal computers and mobile devices to find and print to networked and USB printers without using vendor-specific software (pwg.org)". It was developed by Apple (who of course manufacture mobile devices) and printer manufacturers (who want their devices to be easy to use). In an age when people move from office to office, home to home, with a phone and a tablet or laptop, nobody wants to install a different driver for each printer they use, especially as it may be in a home or office they visit just once. The technology of course makes setting up even one printer or scanner a lot easier.

As Debian now supports this technology, instead of looking for drivers, you should check if your printer or scanner enables driverless printing or scanning. The technology has been around for more than a decade, and most modern devices support it. "Modern" here doesn't mean new, as many older devices support the technology, but some new devices don't, for example some budget printers still on the market that seem to date back a couple of decades. In fact, the use of printer drivers is now deprecated in CUPS (the printing system used by Debian). Eventually support for drivers will be dropped, and in the meantime, Debian is "geared up" to auto-set driverless printing and scanning, so trying to use older method may cause issues.

Lists of printers that support driverless printing can be found at

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201311
https://openprinting.github.io/printers/

For a definitive answer for printers, connect to the network, install avahi-utils (or avahi-discover) and run avahi-browse:

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avahi-browse -rt _ipp._tcp
Bonjour-advertised IPP printers are identified. Look for entries beginning URF=... and pdl=... . If URF=... exists and pdl=... contains image/urf you have an AirPrint printer.

(Debian Wiki)

If you are lucky enough to have a driverless network printer, finding and using the printer is now very easy. For more information about driverless printing and setting up a print queue (finding the printer, however it is connected, basically) see:

CUPSDriverlessPrinting (Debian Wiki)

and

SystemPrinting (Debian Wiki)

The state of the Printer (paper out/jam, low ink/toner, etc) is part of the driverless protocol and should be reported (pwg.org).

For users of driverless printers with a USB connection, using the printer is even easier, as Debian will auto-create a driverless print queue for the printer. This means that printing (and scanning) with a driver won't work. This is a feature not a bug! (Debian Wiki)

For driverless scanning in Bullseye, install the package sane-airscan, and it should just be a case of connecting a compatible device. This package is not an automatic install with SANE (the scanning package) in Bullseye, but it will be in future versions. For the moment, trying to scan with a USB connected driverless scanner in Bullseye without sane-airscan installed will result in various error messages, such as:

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Segmentation fault

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Failed to open device ... ; Out of memory

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Failed to open device ... ; Error during device I/O

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SANE_STATUS_NO_MEM


Please note: I have no technical background in this subject. This is just a summary of what I have learnt reading the source linked to and user posts on the forum. Thanks to brian_p for his many posts on the subject.

Comments/corrections/addition/suggestions are welcome below.

Please note, this topic is NOT for printer issues. If you have a printer or scanner issue, start your own topic please.

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