Information Technology

The less you need to rely on any proprietary protocol to get work done, the better off you are overall. Some of those protocols have been real stumbling blocks -- such as SMB, Microsoft's proprietary protocol for file and printer sharing. Linux implementations of SMB exist, but you're probably better off without it in the long run whenever you can manage it.

I recently set up a Linux workstation that shared out a Hewlett-Packard printer to the rest of my network -- a network that otherwise consisted entirely of Windows machines. I didn't like the idea of setting up SMB support on the Linux box, and instead, explored the possibility of having the Windows machines connect directly to the shared printer as a network printing device.

To my surprise, this turned out to be pretty easy. Here are the steps to connect your Windows machines to the shared printer:

1. Set up the printer on your Linux machine and share it using CUPS via port 631. The exact method for doing this varies between distributions, so check with your distro's documentation. The end result should be a working printer, and a running CUPS service which you can access through your Web browser at http://localhost:631 from the Linux system.
2. Using the CUPS Web interface, go to the Printers tab and make a note of the printer name, which is typically the Description: line). You can do this from the Windows machine where you plan to set up printer support.
3. In Windows, go to Control Panel | Printers and click onAdd a printer.
4. When prompted for a printer location, select Network printer, in the Add Printer Wizard.
5. When prompted for the network location, select URL and use the following URL format: http://hostname:631/printers/printername