Wikipedia:Today's featured article/August 2, 2005



The Common Unix Printing System is a modularised computer printing system for Unix-like operating systems that allows computers to act as powerful print servers. A computer running CUPS is a host which can accept print jobs from client computers, process them, and send them to the appropriate printer. CUPS consists of a Unix print spooler and scheduler, a filter system that convert the print data to a format that the printer will understand, and a backend system that sends this data to the print device. CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol as the basis for managing print jobs and queues. It also provides the traditional System V and Berkeley command line interfaces, along with limited support for the server message block protocol. The device drivers CUPS supplies are based on the PostScript Printer Description. There are a number of user interfaces for different platforms that can configure CUPS, and it has an inbuilt web-based interface.

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