Hey, currently I'm working in a computer lab at my university. Something we're looking for is... eh, it's kind of hard to explain.

We've got Macs and PCs, and how we have printing set up is that you can send a print job from either of these to another computer. You walk over to that computer, swipe a card with money on it, and click your print job to "release" it and have it get printed.

So, what I think we're looking for is a replacement. The one we use now's called Pharos, and I guess it just ain't cutting it or something.

I don't know why, but Linux seems like a natural place to turn for a program like this.

So, you have Pharos running on a Windows server and handling your payment system for printing. It has to both be a print server and provide the connection to the financial system for secure payment transactions. We've used Pharos here in the university library, so I'm somewhat familiar with it.

I'm just going to conjecture that you won't find a free system that does that.

What is it that you don't like about Pharos? In what way is it failing?