For local printing I think you will find Cups the easy way to configure and manage your printer. You only need Samba if you are doing network printing with winbloze machines.
The first steo in getting any printer working, is to determinw if your printer is supported. Check it out at this link.
http://www.linuxprinting.org/
There are examples and doc available there to get supported printers working. Make sure you have the appropriate port support in your kernel, ie. parallel port, USB port etc.
There are other print spoolers other than Cups, like most things in Linux there is lots of choice. Printers in cups can be configured and managed through your web browser.