CIFS will be strategic in some settings, but not included in kernel

[david at lang.hm]

On Mon, 25 Aug 2008, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> Printing will probably be handled via cups. We are missing a lot of
> infrastructure there (automagic configuration, quota mgmt, some admin
> tools, ui), and it does make sense to start building it. Just not
> using platform-specific tools - cups can take care of interoperating.

one annoyance I have with CUPS in current distros is that it wants you to 
install printer drivers for your specific printer on every machine.

pre-CUPS what I would do is install the printer driver on the server the 
printer is attached to and tell all other machines to print in plain 
postscript to that printer and let the server deal with the translation.

with CUPS I seem to have to fight a lot harder to do this.

pro: client config is very simple, and I don't have to touch every client 
if I swap out a printer

pro: CPU intensive conversion from postscript to printer-specific language 
can be done on the (typicaly) more powerful server, rather than the 
clients.

con: you don't get direct access to all the fancy features a printer may 
have (but I don't think they would be available anyway, given the Sugar 
emphisis on simplicity)

con: it requires postscript support on the server side, which is not 
available directly on cheap network printers.


in the situation of the XO deployments, I really think the simplicity of 
not needing to deal with printer drivers on each laptop and the ability to 
move the cpu load to the server when printing should make this strategy 
very attractive.

David Lang