I am trying to solve the following problem and need to pick a linux distribution.

I was recently given a laser printer and want to set it up as a shared printer in our house. What I am hoping to do is connect the printer to an old PIII laptop and use it as a print server.

However, I only want to turn on the laptop and printer when someone needs to print. (And then turn it off when we're done. We're trying to be green!)

So what I need is a distribution that:
- Can act as a print server
- Runs on older hardware (PIII, 256M ram)
- Boots quickly (ideally 1 min or less), since I only want to turn it on when I need to print

Any suggestions for this? I was looking at DSL or Puppy Linux, but I wasn't sure if these were ideal.

any of the linux distros would be fine. If all you are wanting is to run a print server from it, I would suggest only a minimal install with Samba no desktop environment. This would keep boot time down a little and would require very little RAM or cpu usage.

IMO, if you are going to turn it on and off all the time, I would just get a print server from dlink or linksys and plug it into the network. Much easier and uses very little power. They are about $100 though. Just a suggestion

If you want it to be really fast you could suspend or hibernate the machine instead of shutting it down.

Cheers,

Evo2.