# CUPS

17 Hacker News commenters recommended CUPS and 10 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 20 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** Recommended as a free print system that makes almost any printer easy to use, even over a network. Critics point to unfixed bugs and slow maintenance.

## Why people recommend it

- Works with many printers easily (4 comments): "CUPS has always made it quite easier for me to use whatever printer I had at hand" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48740983)) "CUPS just worked, it even supports AirPrint natively now." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47710724)) "CUPS has 'just worked' on Ubuntu for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46499963))
- Reliable for years (3 comments): "Been doing something similar with a Samsung printer and CUPS for years, it’s great" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47682824)) "its been rock solid for me at home and at work and for quite a few customers" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092743)) "it uses the exact same CUPS infra under the hood, and it works just fine" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47461208))
- Prints through a network or server (2 comments): "connected to a Raspberry Pi running CUPS, so I can print labels to them from within my home network" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49348516)) "One nice thing is I can print to the CUPS server even if the printer is off" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46747815))

## What people warn about

- Little active maintenance (2 comments): "Last I heard from CUPS they fired the only guy who was working on it?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49599162)) "They haven’t been actively maintaining it for years." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48556157))
- Bugs and breaking config changes (2 comments): "pushed to users a new version of the CUPS printer scheduler that doesn't like the syntax of some old cupsd.conf files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46092125)) "there's still such an unbelievable amount of basic bugs and low-hanging-fruit optimizations" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46579361))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "CUPS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cups/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).