Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP
by gmac on 4/7/2026, 4:33:57 PM
https://printervention.app/details
Comments
by: morpheuskafka
If you are using an LLM, wouldn't it have been a lot easier to just have the LLM find the relevant CUPS driver decompile or just capture the USB traffic, and rewrite it in Go or something native? (No need to deal with the system printing framework, the goal was just an app that accepts JPEG input.)
4/7/2026, 5:50:50 PM
by: bityard
Okay, this is reasonably genius. I have quite a few USB devices lying around that are either old enough or were niche enough that they don't work on modern _anything_, even Linux. One of them is a GameBoy Advance flash cartridge.
4/7/2026, 6:38:18 PM
by: juancn
Thank you, loved this and it made me "duh!".<p>I have an old-ish Samsung laser printer that works perfectly and a Linux file server at home and the printer no longer supports AirPrint.<p>I never thought about using the Linux box as an AirPrint server! This will free me from all the odd print requests from my kids! (probably)
4/7/2026, 6:23:24 PM
by: SoftTalker
I have an old Epson MX80 dot-matrix printer in the closet, have thought about getting a Raspberry Pi and setting that up so we can wirelessly print to it. But... who would really want that?
4/7/2026, 6:25:31 PM
by: monocasa
Isn't cups a de facto apple project? What's the VM getting you?
4/7/2026, 6:28:20 PM
by: hahn-kev
This is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.
4/7/2026, 5:59:52 PM
by: DeathArrow
I would have asked Claude to write a driver. But this works, too. :)
4/7/2026, 7:20:27 PM
by: leptons
Too bad Apple is still preventing the WebUSB spec from being standardized. They won't even make suggestions to get it through committee because WebUSB might cut into their native app store.
4/7/2026, 6:44:05 PM
by: hulitu
Another AI add.
4/7/2026, 5:51:09 PM
by: redeeman
surely a glorious OS like osx would not be without support for hardware that linux supports? when will it be year of osx desktop?
4/7/2026, 5:45:39 PM