Published at LXer:

My employer, Warnbro Community Library in Western Australia, had a problem with wasted paper from printing. Library patrons often sent unnecessary print jobs to the printers, then refused to pay for them, leaving reams of unclaimed paper. The library needed a print queue to enable library staff to control patrons' print jobs. It needed to be easy to set up and maintain and cost nothing. We found the answer in using Linux as a print server. Our public network consisted of a simple local area network with 15 Windows clients connecting to the outside world via a dedicated proxy server, and one networked Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 5200. As there was no budget to purchase any special server hardware or software, that left out the option of a dedicated Windows print server, which in any case would have been overkill.

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