Making a Printer attached to a Linux machine avbailable to a Windows Machine

[Banfa]

So the title pretty much says it. I am attempting to switch to Linux but the printer attached to my machine must still be accessible by my wife who uses Windows.

Alternatively attaching the printer to my wife's machine and accessing a printer on a Windows machine from Linux machine would work for us to if that is possible and the first option isn't.

[edwardrsmith]

I don't know your exact set-up so I can't be very specific but I can give you some general pointers. First, look up CUPS(Common Unix Printing System). That will let you access windows printers from a linux computer and vice versa. It may also be necessary to set up SAMBA.

Yes, I know. None of that was probably a great help but unless I know the specific Linux distro I can't provide a whole lot more help. I can tell you that it is likely that CUPS and SAMBA are already installed. I can also tell you there is likely an easier way to set it up but without knowing the distro I can't say for sure, much less guide you through it.

If you need more help let me know what linux distribution you are using.

Edward

[Laharl]

Based on another thread, the distro is (K)ubuntu, so CUPS is definitely installed. Dunno about SAMBA, though, I'm not sure if I have it on my own Ubuntu box...I know I can connect to SAMBA servers with it to print when I'm at college, though.

[edwardrsmith]

Well, I haven't used kubuntu recently but I am currently using ubuntu and I believe it is fairly similar so here it does:

(NOTE: I do not have a linux computer in front of my right now so I am doing this from memory. I will check and make sure that I didn't make any mistakes when I get home and post any corrections.)

This is for accessing a printer shared on a windows machine from linux.

Under the system or administration menu's there should be a printing or printer option. If you select that a window should open giving you some options. The type of printer is a windows/samba share. You can try having it search for printers though that never seems to work for me. As for the path to the printer it should be something like ip address:\\printer name. As for the actual sharing of the printer in windows, nothing is different from normal.

As I said before, I will check my directions when I get home but that should give you the general idea.

Edward

P.S. Everything you need should already be installed.