It is now very easy to get common printers to work as network printers using CUPS. Thanks to www.linuxprinting.org and technology giants like HP releasing drivers for Linux. For your printer to work with Linux you have to get the following things:

1. CUPS – (www.cups.org)

2. Foomatic filters – (http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/Foomatic)

3. Ghostscript – ( http://www.ghostscript.com/awki)

4. LSB (LINUX STANDARD BASE) Package – (http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/LSB)

(Please download the right package depending on your Hardware and distribution)

Most of the new releases of all the major distributions of Linux are LSB complaint.

Once you have all these packages installed, get the cups service up. Use the GUI or the command line to add the printer to CUPS.If your printer is not listed on CUPS, download the right drivers (PPD file) from the web. For some brands which have not released the drivers, you might be able to find open drivers, which might not give you the full functionality of the printer. Once you have added the printer on to CUPS, try and print a test page. If it comes all right you have your printer up and running on CUPS. Now you can use Samba to share the printer with other windows clients that you may be using in your network.