On behalf of the Printing Team: ========================================================================
The Release Notes for Debian 10 briefly described the driverless
printing situation implemented via CUPS and cups-filters. The changes
applied to modern printers connected by ethernet or wireless.
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.en.html#driverless-printing
The release of Debian 11 sees the inclusion of ipp-usb into the stable
archive. ipp-usb is recommended by cups-daemon and utilises the
vendor-neutral IPP-over-USB protocol that is supported by many modern
printers. ipp-usb allows a USB device to be seen and treated as a
network device. The outcome is that driverless printing is extended to
include USB connected printers. The specifics are outlined at
https://wiki.debian.org/CUPSDriverlessPrinting.
The systemd service file included in ipp-usb starts the ipp-usb daemon
when a printer is plugged in, making a USB connected printer available
for printing to, either by being auto-setup by cups-browsed or being
manually installed with a local driverless print queue. The use of
vendor printer drivers, free and non-free, becomes unnecessary.
========================================================================
Regards,
Brian.
