Due to the nature of my work (Software Printing Solutions) I tend to work with Microsoft based servers to host printer queues and settings. I am finding it more and more common as we gain new contracts for some systems to be running Linux based systems (always a different variant of Linux) The question is what is a simple distrubution which I can test creating print queues on and how would i share them out so both Windows and Linux based machines could connect to them? It would be helpfull to know both the command line based commands aswell as how to do it through a GUI if one is available.
As always your answers are always appreciated.
The Ubuntu server distribution is a good, simple platform for testing your printing and learning about how it works. Ubuntu uses Common Unix Printing System (CUPS, now maintained by Apple) and SAMBA which you can use for print queue management and sharing across mixed environments. These are both common on many Linux based distributions and there is a lot of good documentation and community support.
Bear in mind that CUPS and Samba can be configured in any linux distro.
Also, there are some hardware incompatibilities between printer/printer drivers and linux in general