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Is LPRng Project Still Alive?
deeptrout asks: "The LPRng distribution hasn't been updated since mid-2004, the LPRng project website hasn't been updated since late 2004, and the LPRng mailing list has been dead since the April of 2005. What's going on? Is the project unofficially dead? Has anyone heard any news from Patric Powell, the author of LPRng? It'd be a shame if that is true. I really like LPRng's simple and yet robust reimplementation of the LPD model that allows to keep the configuration for an entire site with hundreds of hosts and dozens of printers in a fairly simple text file. What are we supposed to do now? Switch to CUPS? Something else?"
Perhaps someone could point out something that I'm missing, but I've been trying to use CUPS for years now with very little success.
The main problem is that shared printers randomly appear and disappear from the configuration. CUPS does not allow one to statically configure anything (very bad). One option I've found is to hardwire the config files with the exact parameters that I want, then make the files unwritable.
I'm tired of clients calling me saying their shared printer has "disappeared". My solution? Install LPRng on all these customer configurations. Since installing LPRng, I've never had a single call about printer sharing.
A mature project SHOULD be dead, since there is nothing more to do. Only a horribly bad idea with a poor basic implementation will need perpetual large scale maintainance. If it works it works, who cares if it's dead?