Ask HN: Did printing stop working for anyone else on Ubuntu 23.10?

13 points

3 years ago

I've been using a network printer with Ubuntu for many years, many releases, without any problems, and since updating to 23.10 printing stopped working. It's broken. Won't print and will crash. I have other computers at home that were upgraded to Ubuntu 23.10 and are having the same problem.

I tested my printer with Fedora 39, Debian 12 and openSUSE Tumbleweed and it works flawlessly.

It seems I'm not alone. I was browsing Canonical's bug tracker and came across this report https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups-browsed/+bug/2042780 where they seem to be having the same problem as I do. But the bug hasn't even been acknowledged by Canonical yet.

If I were to make a guess, this could be related to them trying to move the printing stack to snaps on the 23.10 (https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/05/cups-snap-ubuntu-23-10) and then backing off that idea (https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2023/08/ubuntu-23-10-wont-use-cups-snap). When they reverted the decision, the printing system was left in a broken state.

If printing is broken for many people this is a very serious regression. Makes me wonder what's coming up for the 24.04 LTS release and if I should have a plan B (which is moving to Debian).

Anyone else experiencing the same issue?

11 comments

11 comments