From the looks of that FAQ, macOS support for the project was effectively abandoned long ago. The most recent looking FAQ entries reference Mac OS 10.5, which was released in 2007. Declaring it "formally deprecated" now is - well, a formality.
Not the only problems with printing on modern Mac OS. I recently had to install little linux print servers at many locations due to Apple's Sequoia 15 dropping support for any sort of printing over USB to the ubiquitous and still better than most HP Deskjets used in many offices.
Only if printers didn't keep getting progressively worse. All I want is a printer that can instantly print after I power it on, prints nicely with cheap ink, doesn't connect to the internet, and supports driverless printing.
> As of July 7, 2024 the Gutenprint project has formally deprecated MacOS support. This means that no further MacOS-compatible binaries will be produced.
https://sourceforge.net/about/leadership appears to indicate that it’s still associated with Slashdot Media. I remember when they were bought that the new owner spent quite a bit of time regaining the trust of the software community. No idea how healthy the company’s business or operations are now, but it’s impressive that they’ve survived this long.
I don’t really know what their USP is anymore. It might be fun to start a new project there just to see what it’s like now.
There's a fair number of active projects on SourceForge - a couple of names you might recognize are DOSBox, GParted, and qBittorrent - but what pretty much all of them have in common is that they're old. To a first approximation, no one's launching new projects on SourceForge; projects use it out of inertia, not because it's good.
I must admit I never liked their UI. It still kind of has that 2000s shareware download site feel to it. It always felt too cluttered and bloated and in-the-way of the content. Also it has that stupid download countdown timer. I really hate when sites do that... can't they get rid of it? :(
There have been cases where I needed to install drivers from the manufacturer. Hunting it down from the manufacturer's website is a pain and most importantly, I'd rather avoid installing CrapPrinterBundle.exe [1] from hardware manufacturers if I could avoid it. Gutenprint has been a good alternative in this case.
From the looks of that FAQ, macOS support for the project was effectively abandoned long ago. The most recent looking FAQ entries reference Mac OS 10.5, which was released in 2007. Declaring it "formally deprecated" now is - well, a formality.
(Is Gutenprint even relevant anymore? I don't know a lot about professional printing - if you know more than I do, how outdated does the printer list at https://gimp-print.sourceforge.io/p_Supported_Printers.php look?)
I think stopping binary releases is more than a formality though.
The last release was in 2019. For all intents and purposes, they'd already stopped.
For context the guy who made Gutenprint (and CUPS) deprecated the PPD driver API in CUPS and it doesn’t support them anymore.
https://github.com/apple/cups/issues/5271
So I assume thats why there’s no maintainers, and probably will never be.
Not the only problems with printing on modern Mac OS. I recently had to install little linux print servers at many locations due to Apple's Sequoia 15 dropping support for any sort of printing over USB to the ubiquitous and still better than most HP Deskjets used in many offices.
Only if printers didn't keep getting progressively worse. All I want is a printer that can instantly print after I power it on, prints nicely with cheap ink, doesn't connect to the internet, and supports driverless printing.
I get GP’s sentiment, but I’m tired of printer crap too. Especially special drivers/apps they ‘need’.
AirPrint makes my life easy, so support it or don’t get purchased.
Gutenprint is also not packaged for 32-bit ARM (armel/armhf) in Debian 13 due to issues with 32-bit → 64-bit time_t transition on 32-bit platforms
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1064089
> As of July 7, 2024 the Gutenprint project has formally deprecated MacOS support. This means that no further MacOS-compatible binaries will be produced.
> sourceforge.io
Blast from the past. The 1990's and 2000's were a different time.
Does anybody know how many active projects are still left there? And who wound up owning them after Slashdot?
> Does anybody know how many active projects are still left there?
https://sourceforge.net/directory/ shows hundreds of thousands, but I can’t see a good way to filter out inactive projects.
> And who wound up owning them after Slashdot?
https://sourceforge.net/about/leadership appears to indicate that it’s still associated with Slashdot Media. I remember when they were bought that the new owner spent quite a bit of time regaining the trust of the software community. No idea how healthy the company’s business or operations are now, but it’s impressive that they’ve survived this long.
I don’t really know what their USP is anymore. It might be fun to start a new project there just to see what it’s like now.
There's a fair number of active projects on SourceForge - a couple of names you might recognize are DOSBox, GParted, and qBittorrent - but what pretty much all of them have in common is that they're old. To a first approximation, no one's launching new projects on SourceForge; projects use it out of inertia, not because it's good.
Sourceforge is still used as a storage for ISOs, firmware builds, and other large binary "artifacts", because it allows large files, unlike GitHub.
I must admit I never liked their UI. It still kind of has that 2000s shareware download site feel to it. It always felt too cluttered and bloated and in-the-way of the content. Also it has that stupid download countdown timer. I really hate when sites do that... can't they get rid of it? :(
Does macOS not already have their own printer drivers? Why would someone install gimp-print on their MacBook?
There have been cases where I needed to install drivers from the manufacturer. Hunting it down from the manufacturer's website is a pain and most importantly, I'd rather avoid installing CrapPrinterBundle.exe [1] from hardware manufacturers if I could avoid it. Gutenprint has been a good alternative in this case.
[1]: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/printers
Yes. Even better, you also get officially supported drivers from the manufacturer.
Sometimes you need them to fully utilize the printer, like my Canon Pixma Pro-100.
https://gimp-print.sourceforge.io/p_FAQ_OS_X.php#description
Dye sublimation printers is another reason. Gutenprint has great support for those
[flagged]
Please don't post snarky comments like this on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I'm pretty sure MacOSX shipped with CUPS, not gutenprint.
You’re right, that’s what it used (uses?).
CUPS is alive and well within macOS.