HACKER Q&A
📣 profwalkstr

Did printing stop working for anyone else on Ubuntu 23.10?


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?

  👤 pawelduda Accepted Answer ✓
What is some distro that's closest to Ubuntu in terms of setup but doesn't force snaps and stupid regressions like this, while having good package repos? Thinking about wiping it off my laptop because it looks like I would be burned by jumping early into 23.10
👤 PenguinCoder
A Ubuntu update broke printing for me due to cups issues around app-armor. Not sure what the issue specifically was, just irritation when disabling app-armor and a restart caused printing to start working.
👤 garciansmith
Just upgraded to 23.10 and my printer (Brother HL-L2370DW) works as before. Though I'm using Kubuntu, if it makes a difference.