Best Disrtor for printer server?

[Sixpac_XP]

So I am fed up with my Windows 2000 server as a Windows print server. It was a clean istall on a Windows 2000 IBM blade with 2 gigs of Ram and dual 2 GB Xeon Pro's.

The print service craps out all the time.

So anyways I am looking at putting on a Linux distro to act as my Windows neworked print server handling about 45 networked all HP printers. (mostly HP 4100 and 4050's).

So which Linux distro should I put on my blade (which is best for being a print only server) and is there any good how - to docs to do this? (like step by step).. all I know with linux right now is VI really.

I have tried Redhat Linux 9 and Samba and Cups and could never get it to work properly. I could printer from the linux server but I couldn't even see my Linux printers from any Windows 2000 clients (I could ping each other though).

Need more info.. let me know. I really am hoping to get this linux box working.

Thanks... sixpac

[Ruler2112]

If you can print to the printers from the linux box, the problem is with the Samba setup. It is confusing, but there are several how-to docs on how to set it up.

What I did was to go into X, then go to Server Settings, More Settings, and Samba Server. Enable it if it isn't, then poke around for the printer. (I'm on RH73 now, so I can't give you more specifics. If you can't find it, reply and I'll go into my boss's office when she isn't there and get the exact steps. It was about 4 months ago that I set it up after all!) After you find the printer, set it to be shared to everybody (if that's what you want). Then create a samba user and have the windoze boxes connect to the printer using the username/password you just set up.

If you want to be sure everything else is working properly, share a directory on the linux box. It's much simpler to verify that's working and will allow you to rule out everything not directly related to the printer.

[Foggy]

IMHO the most printer friendly distro is Lycoris.