CUPS Print Server - Linux - Windows - OSX
 

Hello Fellow Linux World,

Here's my situation, some details spared, I help manage a network that has hundreds of users, and many printers. We have a working cups print server that allows us to monitor print usage etc. Ever since the release of Mountain Lion by Apple we have had many issues with those computers finding printers, or effectively using printers. Our cups server is pretty out of date, but due to the large number of users and printers we have kept it because it has been fairly reliable.

So at the moment, I have a Test Server (so I can experiment without affecting our users) with RHEL6 and am running cups 1.4.2 my goal, figure out how to upgrade our system, and have an environment that will allow Windows, Mac, and Linux clients, while also allowing for tracking of printing etc.

What recommendations/tips can you give me? Any cool projects etc. out there, that allow for easy coercion of the three OS's? Ideally this solution would be something extremely reliable and fairly easy for all the users to use.

Thank you!

We attached our printers to a Redhat system which let us have CUPS web-based management. We exported the printers as both Unix printers and via samba as a Windows share. Everyone was able to connect via one or the other method.