On 06/13/2015 11:03 AM, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 10:22:29AM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:
>> * On 2015 13 Jun 08:08 -0500, LM wrote:
>>> Laurent Bercot wrote:
>>> It would be great if Devuan became the Linux distribution that offered
>>> its users alternatives to more commonly used, often bloated software.
>>> It would certainly make a great base distribution for other
>>> derivatives if it did. Most Linux distributions I've run across so
>>> far try to limit ones choices and make you follow their philosophy and
>>> way of doing things. Personally, the systems that work the best for
>>> me are the ones that don't try to lock you into doing things a
>>> specific way and let you do what you want.
>> This, exactly this. Thank you, Laura, you have penned in your last
>> sentence exactly what my philosophy has been ever since Windows 95 was
>> dumped on the scene and I went to Slackware to maintain the freedom I
>> had known with MS-DOS. I think I have gotten lax in the intervening
>> years (something about aging and wanting to divert my energies into
>> other areas) and accepted these new monoliths/monocultures for the ease
>> they provided. Over the past year I have had a rude awakening and am
>> generally striving toward minimalism these days.
>>
>> I would dearly love to dump CUPS in favor of something comprehensible
>> that would feed my HL-5240 compatible PS or PCL.
> What's convenient about Cups is that it knows what printer driver to use.
>
> What used to be convenient before Cups is that I could just write a
> program that created a postscript file and send it to my printer using
> a command like lpr, which knew that the printer was attached through
> the parallel port.
>
> I liked it back then. I could write actual postsript programs that
> computed diagrams.
>
> I have no idea what to do now. As far as I know, everything is
> intercepted and rerouted. I'm not even sure if my laptop is talking to
> the printer or to my wife's Apple laptop, which also runs CUPS.
>
> CUPS used to e usable. But now?
>
> I tried to print a jpeg image a while ago. I used a browser. I had a
> choice between one mode thta I think was one screen pixel per printer
> pixel -- useless, and 'fit to page', which seemed to think my
> standard 8.5 x 11 page was twice as big, so I oonly got a quarter of
> the image.
>
> I think that Brother is one of the companies that advertises actual
> Unix support, and that my printer an HL-3170CDW, at least, accepts a
> variety of networked protocols, including some that originated in Unix.
> But I don't know how to access them without CUPS.
>
> There must be a way.
>

CUPS definitely is a monster, but it does add to the convenience of
setup "out of the box" for many printers even ones that have reached
"end of life" as far as the manufacturer is concerned.
I use a LaserJet 1200 and there are a multitude of drivers and then the
HP CUPS add-ons to add to the confusion.

I would think that since CUPS can be used in the various BSD flavours,
Apple included, systemd is just used in the latest Linux versions as a
common convenience. I am no programmer, but it would seem to me that
dumping systemd from the source would be doable.

Clarke