Best Network Print Server? Linux?

[aidanjt]

CUPS has a huge library of printer ppd's, practically all the workgroup printers are covered, so he should be ok at that end. Samba ain't the easiest to configure but most of the mainstream distros try to make AD intergration as painless as reasonably possible. I think it would be worth the attempt, the experience and overall efficency would be worth the time and effort IMHO, if it doesn't go well, even failures have their rewards.

[peterb]

In otherwords use Ubuntu.

Why? All the mainstream distros support CUPS - Ubuntu wil be no better - or worse - than anything else!

CUPS has a huge library of printer ppd's, practically all the workgroup printers are covered, so he should be ok at that end. Samba ain't the easiest to configure but most of the mainstream distros try to make AD intergration as painless as reasonably possible. I think it would be worth the attempt, the experience and overall efficency would be worth the time and effort IMHO, if it doesn't go well, even failures have their rewards.

Agreed - and if the printer(s) it is supporting are postscript capable - it becomes even easier as the ppds are the same for the windows printing system as CUPS. Just looking through the list there is supporrt back to the Epson MX80 onwards for all the major brands. The only slight proviso is that specialised phot-printers (non-postscript - for example the Epson photomates and the like) might not be -I haven't looked specifically - but then you probably wouldn't want to run those off a printer server in this environment anyway!