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Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

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Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#31

Post by asteroidburger »

juancn wrote: post #8

Thank you, loved this and it made me "duh!". I have an old-ish Samsung laser printer that works perfectly and a Linux file server at home and the printer no longer supports AirPrint. I never thought about using the Linux box as an AirPrint server! This will free me from all the odd print requests from my kids! (probably)

It’ll work great if you can get the drivers all aligned properly. I’ve tried a few times to get my 12 year old Brother laser setup like that, and each time I end up throwing in the towel.

Maybe I’ll try it again someday with an LLM assisting.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#32

Post by kube-system »

Gabrys1 wrote: post #30

> I must apologise that I haven’t so far open-sourced any part of this that I don’t have to. Mainly that’s because I think this would be an awesomely sticky web property for a printer consumables firm to integrate with their sales site. And I’d much prefer it if they paid me to white-label it for them, rather than just forking a repo and getting it all for free. They might be interested if they cared at all about the…

They are referring to aftermarket ink cartridge companies, not the printer OEM.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#33

Post by cosmic_cheese »

leptons wrote: post #16

Too bad Apple is still preventing the WebUSB spec from being standardized. They won't even make suggestions to get it through committee because WebUSB might cut into their native app store.

Mozilla doesn’t want it either.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#34

Post by monocasa »

davsti4 wrote: post #28
leptons wrote: post #16

Too bad Apple is still preventing the WebUSB spec from being standardized. They won't even make suggestions to get it through committee because WebUSB might cut into their native app store.

From: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/WebUSB_API "WebUSB provides a way for these non-standardized USB device services to be exposed to the web. This means that hardware manufacturers will be able to provide a way for their device to be accessed from the web, without having to provide their own API." That doesn't sound secure at all!

Which is why Firefox doesn't support it either.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#35

Post by jeroenhd »

Gabrys1 wrote: post #30

> I must apologise that I haven’t so far open-sourced any part of this that I don’t have to. Mainly that’s because I think this would be an awesomely sticky web property for a printer consumables firm to integrate with their sales site. And I’d much prefer it if they paid me to white-label it for them, rather than just forking a repo and getting it all for free. They might be interested if they cared at all about the…

These printer makers have the source code and the ability to write firmware. If they wanted to support WebUSB, they could and would.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#36

Post by HeyMeco »

mikepurvis wrote: post #19
juancn wrote: post #8

Thank you, loved this and it made me "duh!". I have an old-ish Samsung laser printer that works perfectly and a Linux file server at home and the printer no longer supports AirPrint. I never thought about using the Linux box as an AirPrint server! This will free me from all the odd print requests from my kids! (probably)

I have a Samsung ML-1740 kicking around still that I just can't bear to part with; I've been meaning forever to RasPi-ify it, but it's one of those projects that feels like it's going to end up being a rabbit hole.

ML-1740 is supported by the driver available here: https://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/index.html Works on my arm64 sbc as a cups printer for another samsung printer

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#38

Post by gmac »

ale42 wrote: post #37

I'm using an ancient Canon Selphy photo printer... on Windows 11 without any issues. Using the Windows 7 64-bit driver, worked basically out-of-the-box. It's definitely not officially supported, but to date it works totally fine.

Huh, interesting. Is the driver built in to Windows, downloaded from Canon, or acquired some other way?

TBH the web app story on Windows isn’t ideal anyway because you have to install Zadig before it will work.

Re: Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

#40

Post by hexmiles »

I know that it is a heavyweight solution, but it could be useful for some situations with old driver/devices/applications. I have some old hardware that is compatible only with pre-WinNT OS, and I could do something similar to provide a simple solution for the end user.
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