Rescuing old printers with an in-browser Linux VM bridged to WebUSB over USB/IP

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?

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.)

hulitu

Another AI add.

hahn-kev

This is pretty cool! Thanks for sharing.

juancn

Thank you, loved this and it made me "duh!". 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. 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)

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?

monocasa

Isn't cups a de facto apple project? What's the VM getting you?

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.

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.

DeathArrow

I would have asked Claude to write a driver. But this works, too. :)

randusername

what the heck we're not in web 1.0 anymore are we

Gabrys1

> I must apologise that I haven’t so far open-sourced any part of this that I don’t have to. Mainly that’s because I think this would be an awesomely sticky web property for a printer consumables firm to integrate with their sales site. And I’d much prefer it if they paid me to white-label it for them, rather than just forking a repo and getting it all for free. They might be interested if they cared at all about the ease of use of their printers

ale42

I'm using an ancient Canon Selphy photo printer... on Windows 11 without any issues. Using the Windows 7 64-bit driver, worked basically out-of-the-box. It's definitely not officially supported, but to date it works totally fine.

PunchyHamster

Doesn't Apple outright uses CUPS in the first place ? Did they just removed old drivers in their version ?

hexmiles

I know that it is a heavyweight solution, but it could be useful for some situations with old driver/devices/applications. I have some old hardware that is compatible only with pre-WinNT OS, and I could do something similar to provide a simple solution for the end user.

simoncion

Oh neat. v86 is mentioned in the FOSDEM 2025 slides [0] for another wasm port of QEMU. Interesting that what appears to be v86's inability to run x86 executables didn't fuck you. I wonder why the decision wasn't made to use the network sharing features of SANE and CUPS, instead of requiring one to use Chrome due to the WebUSB dependency. Seems to me that you'd have a way more general solution if you could usefully deploy your VM both in any major web browser and as a standalone program. [0] < https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/events/attachments/fosdem-20... >

CodeWriter23

So. Does this methodology mean someone can surreptitiously boot up a Linux VM running Wireguard in your browser and be inside your firewall via chrome.sockets API?

aesopturtle

One thing I appreciate here is that it treats old hardware as worth saving, not as a nuisance to route around. There’s a lot of hidden value in software that extends the life of perfectly functional devices, especially when the alternative is replacing them for reasons that are mostly ecosystem drift. This is the good kind of absurd.

ValdikSS

>Perhaps I could set them up a Raspberry Pi as a print server? But that would make it not so cheap. And anyway, I’m not convinced they’d go for the extra plugs and wires. $35 and it's yours, with tech support and CUPS/SANE development funding included, and all open source: https://printserver.ink Extra plugs could be eliminated with the help of "IEC320 3 pin C14 TO Male C13+2" cable: https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-media.com/kf/S4c8681fb1283499b8...

Fnoord

I did this with a Raspberry Pi. The printer in question only has WiFi and USB, no ethernet (the WiFi wasn't stable, and I don't trust the TCP/IP stack anyway). So what I did was I connected it to a Raspberry Pi via USB which is connected via ethernet to the living room. I added AirPrint and brscan, and the device can be shared via usbip. For example, you can use a USB SDR and connect to it via usbip. Initially, I also had to actually use qemu x86-64 for the scanner part which wasn't ideal. The only UI computers which use it, are Apple's (iPhone and iPad). In a world where the network is the computer, usbip and iscsi are very cool tech. The reason I went with a Raspberry Pi is since it already acts as an interface for Valetudo. So it was already in use anyway. Also, I want to add Bluetooth for IoT scanning, considering to run Home Assistant on it. But yes, what it does lack is a UI. I was thinking of adding something with a reverse proxy, but I have no idea what, and this whole project isn't residing in my house. It is in my mother's apartment.