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I have all the pieces in place, and my ultimate plan here is to switch all our desktops over, once I find something that isn't going to reduce the 'feature set' of our desktops. An upgrade isn't really viable if I have to tell everyone "oh sorry, you can't select printing options when you print anymore, they can only be set in the driver options - which you can't access".

I read that on /. and he's right. You can't do that like in Windows. Any ideas why and/or how to "fix" it?

elaborate, please

Have you looked into the Common UNIX Printing System already? The X Printing Panel might be just what you're looking for (it utilizes CUPS).

I never had to support where the print server existed on Linux; rather Windows and with Linux clients of varying RedHat releases.

It was no end of pain, using LRP, LRPng and CUPS. The drivers themselves seemed to be inconsistent per release - couple of releases used JetDirect while others would only work with omni (?).

I will give them this - the *nix driver allowed me to do things on the printer that the Win drivers wouldn't, supposedly that the printer even needed a bios update to do. But I was never able to print from within an application - it would only work via command line.

Quote:
I have all the pieces in place, and my ultimate plan here is to switch all our desktops over, once I find something that isn't going to reduce the 'feature set' of our desktops. An upgrade isn't really viable if I have to tell everyone "oh sorry, you can't select printing options when you print anymore, they can only be set in the driver options - which you can't access".


I read that on /. and he's right. You can't do that like in Windows. Any ideas why and/or how to "fix" it?

Windows clients can print to a unix/samba print server and retain the full feature set of the windows drivers.

Most of the problems I've encountered, or heard about result from people trying to use printers with less than exemplary cross platform support ( Windows GDI printers ) in an environment that is not pure Windows.

If you stick with Postscript capable printers you can achieve very good results with the CUPS software ( MS Publisher being the only troublesome application for me thus far ).