CUPS
Print server in Computers
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.
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.
27 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 10
- approval share
- 63%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Owned for 20 years
Median of the 3 owners who said how long they have had it.
Each square is one year.
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works with many printers easily
“CUPS has always made it quite easier for me to use whatever printer I had at hand”
Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “CachyOS June 2026 Release” “CUPS just worked, it even supports AirPrint natively now.”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP” “CUPS has 'just worked' on Ubuntu for me”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “It's hard to justify Tahoe icons” - Comment from 3 Apr 2026 in “Decisions that eroded trust in Azure – by a former Azure Core engineer”
Reliable for years
“Been doing something similar with a Samsung printer and CUPS for years, it’s great”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP” “its been rock solid for me at home and at work and for quite a few customers”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Let go of StackOverflow; communities must take ownership” “it uses the exact same CUPS infra under the hood, and it works just fine”
Comment from 20 Mar 2026 in “Our Commitment to Windows Quality” Prints through a network or server
“connected to a Raspberry Pi running CUPS, so I can print labels to them from within my home network”
Comment from 18 Aug 2026 in “Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows” “One nice thing is I can print to the CUPS server even if the printer is off”
Comment from 24 Jan 2026 in “Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Little active maintenance
“Last I heard from CUPS they fired the only guy who was working on it?”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “Asahi Linux on M3” “They haven’t been actively maintaining it for years.”
Comment from 16 Jun 2026 in “Apple's CUPS repo was archived” Bugs and breaking config changes
“pushed to users a new version of the CUPS printer scheduler that doesn't like the syntax of some old cupsd.conf files”
Comment from 30 Nov 2025 in “Let go of StackOverflow; communities must take ownership” “there's still such an unbelievable amount of basic bugs and low-hanging-fruit optimizations”
Comment from 11 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (January 2026)”
What people said
22 of the 27 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“In Linux it's pretty easy to create such things with cups”
“Last I heard from CUPS they fired the only guy who was working on it?”
“connected to a Raspberry Pi running CUPS, so I can print labels to them from within my home network”
“CUPS has always made it quite easier for me to use whatever printer I had at hand”
“Cups is a bit of old and dangerous”
“CUPS exited but was a pain to configure”
“They haven’t been actively maintaining it for years.”
“ChromeOS printing is literally just CUPS, so it has the same functionality as any other Linux distro”
“CUPS just worked, it even supports AirPrint natively now.”
“Been doing something similar with a Samsung printer and CUPS for years, it’s great”
“It blew my mind with how easy it was”
“it uses the exact same CUPS infra under the hood, and it works just fine”
“cups wouldn't be a good choice since there's a little more back-and-forth than just blasting out data to the printer”
“thermal printers are centuries backwards from anything like CUPS”
“my experience with CUPS is mixed”
“One nice thing is I can print to the CUPS server even if the printer is off”
“big thanks to GP for his work of CUPS / Linux printing”
“there's still such an unbelievable amount of basic bugs and low-hanging-fruit optimizations”
“CUPS has 'just worked' on Ubuntu for me”
“its been rock solid for me at home and at work and for quite a few customers”
“pushed to users a new version of the CUPS printer scheduler that doesn't like the syntax of some old cupsd.conf files”
“The Cups website doesn’t even list its features”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.