I have 3 Mac's running on a small network. I also have a number of PCs that I want to better integrate with my Apple computers by installing a Linux build.

What Linux build would work best to integrate/communicate/work with my new Mac's? Thank you for your advice.

Current Linux machines:
Puppy Linux
Ubuntu 16.04
elementary OS

All good builds, but none have been cooperative with the Macs.

What's the problem that makes you think something's wrong?

I have set up my Mac Mini as a print server for a non-network enabled printer. The Mini also serves as a backup slave for my other two Macs. I want to be able to access both the printer and the files on the Mini along with the files on the other Macs AND a network printer. I've tried using Samba for accessing both printers on Puppy, but no love. I've also tried using Netatalk on all three builds; I was able to access only the files on the Mini using eOS, only the files on the iMac using Ubuntu and neither on Puppy.

Searching online for help getting Linux to talk to a Mac network has had limited success - only after going down many rabbit holes was I able to find Netatalk. That's why I thought I'd ask some experts if my answer is better found in a build than in putting pieces together.

For the printer, since all your OSes use Cups, it should be very simple. For file sharing, in the past(with Mac OS X.2) I was using NFS.