[CALUG] using an XP PC as a print server?

[Worsley, Christopher]

A friend of mine had a slightly different, but similar problem. He has a printer/scanner/copier that requires a ton of bloated drivers and apps to support it. That drove him crazy, even though the host computer was XP. There were programs that loaded at startup, then pop-up dialogs telling him about ink levels, etc. He wanted a way to control all of that.

His solution: he runs a WinXP VM that has all of the drivers & apps on it. He also shares it so that others on his network can use it. That is the entire purpose of his VM "appliance". I'll ask him today, but I think he hosts this VM on a Linux machine and it just runs in the background, so he only looks at it when necessary.

You can see his motivation was to control bloatware, but I'd bet something like that work might fit your needs.

Cheers

Christopher


-----Original Message-----
From: calug-bounces at unknownlamer.org [mailto:calug-bounces at unknownlamer.org] On Behalf Of mhartwx
Sent: Monday, August 11, 2008 8:05 PM
To: CALUG at unknownlamer.org
Subject: [CALUG] using an XP PC as a print server?

My 'orphan' Canon multipass F80 is a fine piece of machinery but it has always been a paperweight in Linux & will be for MS Vista.  So once I replace my 2003 dual-boot Mandriva / XP PC, is there a way to use this old PC to run the F80 using the XP drivers?  I've now got Verizon FIOS & would like to have new & old PC's networked thru the verizon router.  I've been googling network printing with Linux & XP but all the info I've found seems to want to use Linux print drivers & Samba to handle the XP printing.  I haven't found anything about using XP drivers on the printer PC from a networked Linux machine.
        mlh

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