Re: The future of lpr and lpd

> On Feb 20, 2026, at 1:54 PM, Garrett Wollman <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> <<On Fri, 20 Feb 2026 19:39:49 +0100, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <[email protected]> said:
> 
>> Due to low code quality, known bugs, and a general lack of interest over
>> the past several decades, we are currently considering retiring the
>> entire lp* suite (lp(1), lpc(1), lpd(8), lpq(1), lpr(1), lprm(1),
>> lptest(1), pac(8)) from base.
> 
> I did a lot of work on these tools about 25 years ago, and I have not
> had any reason to touch them in nearly 20 as I use CUPS exclusively.
> I expect that's true of most people who at one time used this suite.
> I have been building WITHOUT_LPR=yes for many many years and have not
> missed them.

IIRC, CUPS also provides workalikes for lp, lpq, etc. too, so if you do switch over and you have existing stuff that relies on piping print jobs to lp, you're set (I have a billing box that does this for printed invoices and moved to CUPS a long time ago).

Just throwing that out there for anyone still using the old tools!

Charles

> 
> -GAWollman
> 
>