Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#61

Post by happyPersonR » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:16 PM UTC

unregistereddev wrote: post #56

ncr100 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would calling it a "driver adapter" fit more accurately .. ?

I don't think so, no. It does not appear to be functioning as an OSX device driver. It's just hosting a network print server in docker.

Tbh I actually like this even more than writing a driver …

Makes it so if there’s an issue I don’t get a kernel panic

Maybe it could write something CUPS compliant though ?

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#62

Post by ASalazarMX » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:17 PM UTC

ncr100 wrote: post #51

ssdspoimdsjvv wrote: post #49

If I understand correctly, it just wraps an existing Linux driver in a container. You can hardly call that writing a driver.

Would calling it a "driver adapter" fit more accurately .. ?

Why not call it a containerized driver?

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#63

Post by sylvinus » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 7:20 PM UTC

I did the same for a scanner that was missing an driver for latest macOS! https://github.com/sylvinus/freethescan

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#64

Post by srmatto » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 8:42 PM UTC

3129476 wrote: post #54

Claude did not write any macOS driver. It uses the HP Linux driver inside docker. Here is prior art from 2017. In contrast to the AI gibberish, one can understand it: https://www.alecburton.co.uk/2017/printing-from-a-docker-con... There are many such tutorials and Claude just plagiarized as usual.

Then I guess we need someone to sic Claude on trying to re-write the linux driver for MacOS then and see what happens.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#65

Post by ValentineC » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#66

Post by saejox » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 9:31 PM UTC

my Brother dcp-t230 also doesn't have macos drivers and it's a usb only printer. if i ever get some tokens to burn, i would try the same.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#67

Post by LeoPanthera » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 9:32 PM UTC

Claude Code is extremely "honest", and uses that word 10 times in that short transcript.

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#68

Post by iluvcommunism » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 9:35 PM UTC

[dead]

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#69

Post by f0cus10 » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

saejox wrote: post #66

my Brother dcp-t230 also doesn't have macos drivers and it's a usb only printer. if i ever get some tokens to burn, i would try the same.

i have a label printer that's in the same boat. I wonder how many tokens this convo was

Re: Claude writing a macOS driver for my obscure HP printer built only for Windows

#70

Post by IronWolve » Tue, Aug 18, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

Claude is great at that. I have a usb keypad with no linux version of the app to program it. Since its just a vial/qmk based, claude built me a linux version in qt/python.