CUPS 2 has been released

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in hardware on (#2TCH)
CUPS, the Common Unix Printing Specification, has just released version 2.0 of its software. Mike Sweet, the project founder, reflects here on what makes CUPS 2 different, how printing has changed over the 15 years elapsed since CUPS 1.0, and what printing means in a world full of wifi and cloud-connected devices.
Today our focus on printing is much different than in 1999. Wireless networking and mobile computing are everywhere. We no longer want printer drivers, but expect printers that support standard protocols and formats with fantastic output quality that we could only dream of 15 years ago. And our printing is more focused and personal.
The changes since the previous version of CUPS are actually not all that substantial. This is a minor bug-fix and maintenance release. Specifically:
CUPS 2.0.0 is now available for download. The focus of this major release is on performance and security improvements. Changes since 2.0rc1 include:

The scheduler did not preserve listener sockets from launchd or systemd after a restart ()
Added some USB quirk rules for the libusb-based USB backend (STR #4482)
Spanish localization update (STR #4487)
Updated documentation for 2.0.0 release.
Enjoy!

Re: I don't see the change... (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2014-10-15 17:37 (#2TCX)

They had a great device, but really let everything fall apart right when they had the perfect chance. They didn't offer ethernet, nor WiFi when it came along, so it quickly felt like a relic. It seems they pinned all their hopes for years on the Nokia 9210 Communicator, which had plenty of limitations the Psion 5 didn't (short battery life, no touch-screen, etc), and still didn't offer ethernet and WiFi, being an even more specialized device that always depended on cellular connectivity, when that was primitive (early 2G with poor coverage), painfully slow, and ridiculous expensive. A great device for its one specific use case of business travelers with plenty of money to burn, but that's about it... Most people (including the key demo) were perfectly happy tethering their PDAs to their phones via RS-232 or IrDA at the time, so it wasn't a big hit, unlike later smartphones when 3G came around. It wasn't until years later with the 9500 that WiFi (and a camera) was added.

But I'm just ranting at this point. They had a great device, but they failed miserably to really capitalize on it, so somehow Apple managed to re-create the market that had practically died-off, with an inferior device (no keyboard, crippled productivity apps, etc).

Also, I would have kept the Psion 5MX around and working to this day, as as dumb terminal (via RS-232), but the screen resolution was too low to show 80x24 characters on-screen comfortably without scrolling all the time to view everything, and the CPU (or perhaps the terminal software) was so slow that it wasn't nice and responsive and comfortable to use.
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