OpenPrinting/cups

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1730 stars · 313 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

OpenPrinting CUPS is the standards-based, open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems, supporting AirPrint, IPP Everywhere, and legacy PPD-based printers. It provides System V and Berkeley command-line interfaces, a web-based administration interface, a C API, and print filters, drivers, and backends.

Use cases

• set up a print server on linux
• print to an AirPrint or IPP Everywhere printer from a unix system
• manage printer queues and print jobs via a web interface
• add a USB printer to a linux machine
• integrate printing into an application via a C API
• replace legacy lpr/lp printing infrastructure

When to choose

• you need a standards-based IPP print server on Linux or BSD
• you want driverless printing to modern network printers
• you need a mature, widely supported printing system with CLI and web administration

When to avoid

• you only need printing on macOS or iOS, where Apple maintains its own CUPS fork
• you need a graphical print management tool rather than a system service
• you are not working with printing at all

Facets

application · maturity active

http-server cli sdk operating-systems developer-tools hardware bsd cli printing ipp print-server cups print-drivers airprint linux macos web-server

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="OpenPrinting/cups")