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With all the issues that seem to be revolving around the printing eco-system these days, I thought I would ask if anyone has any insights on where the industry is heading in the near future. For years we had Windows print queues that worked just fine with either Mac or PC clients. We have Papercut which is a wonderful piece of software too. 

iOS has Airprint and, again, Papercut was able to rescue us with their Mobility Print server. 

Now, Print Nightmare almost killed SMB printing and CUPS is killing PPD and lpadmin for printer management in Linux and MacOS. Or at least they keep saying it will go away. 

We use lpadmin in scripts to deploy printers to MacOS. It worked, but now in MacOS 12, it doesn't work so well. PPDs don't get installed correctly and print jobs to the Windows servers seem to just hang and not go anywhere. Not to mention the vendors were slow getting MacOS 12 drivers out too. 

Where to go from here? Its seems CUPS wants us to all go driver-less and Windows doesn't want anybody but Win10 to print to their servers anymore.  I have users that will still need all those advance print options that come with drivers. Just trying to figure out which direction to go

Thoughts?

Great question.  
I am about to (or already am) heading down that path. What we currently do is not manageable for a global company with 1000s of printers.

Sorry I have no information but I am interested in what others have as a potential solution. We are exactly the same with Papercut and Windows Print Servers. We haven't had too much issues with our lpadmin scripts yet...hopefully that doesn't come to bite me soon. The advanced printing and finishing functions available with the PPDs is paramount when printing in a corporate or education environment.

Printing is one of the biggest thorns in my side. We also use Windows Server and PaperCut with typical ups and downs. Last year was the worst by far with Print Nightmare and the patches that followed. That being said I honestly over the years have spent more man hours troubleshooting random printing issues on machines running Windows than Macs.

We also use lpadmin in scripts to distribute queues to Macs and knock on wood they've been very solid even with 11.x and 12.x. Apple CUPS is pushing everyone to IPP Everywhere or PPD-less queues, but while I can find lots of Lasers with Everywhere capability, I can't seem to find any MFPs(Copiers) that currently support it. Even then if the queue is setup on a Windows Server for the Mac to connect to Everywhere functionality doesn't mean squat until MSFT updates it's woefully out of date IPP implementation.

For my part I have been systematically getting rid of printers throughout our campus. It's got to be one of our bigger cash drains between paper, toner and servicing. I'm not at the top of the totem pole so to speak so I can't outright deny a printer, but will definitely push hard against it and advocate for "Be green. Keep it on the screen".

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