I'm about to take a desktop and make it into a print server. Is there a fairly straight forward set of instructions available for the setup? Also any suggestions for the best distro to use? I've dabbled with linux over the years, but I've never been able to have a dedicated machine for it before. Currently all I have is Ubuntu and OpenSuse setups on Virtual Box running under WIN 7.

So obviously I have disks for those already, but I can download any distro if someone thinks another will serve my purpose better. All of the machines that will need to access the print server are laptops running WIN 7. The machine I will run the server on is an older Compaq presario with a 1 GB 64 bit processor and 2 GB of memory.

you could just share it under win7 since it's always on. using a virtual machine will also work but if it crashes or is not running that's ust an extra step to resolve.
the other easy solution which is also cheap and less effort is just to get a printserver, they're as cheap as 30.00 and will be independant of any pc's.
as for which distro, it doesn't really matter, all my printers are network printers, and all my pc's not only can print diesctly to them but also through my servers which share them.
if my server goes down no big deal, I print directly to them.

I don't have a copy of WIN 7 for that machine. Right now it runs Vista, and I was never able to get the printer shared on it. I don't plan to run Linux under a VM. The Linux VM installs I have now are on my laptop with WIN 7. I am going to make the desktop a dedicated Linux machine, and I'm thinking I will prolly go with the Ubuntu installation. If anything, I will put Vista back on there as a VM just so my wife can still use it. I'm trying to get her to become more reliant on her laptop though. I may end up getting a docking station for her to give her more of the feel she is used to though since that seems to be an issue for her.

I don't mind buying a print server for that price, but if I can set this up for free then I don't see any reason to spend the money as long as this works like it should. I did some searching for some print server setup instructions but what I found seemed to be a bit dated. Some even saying that it explicitly didn't support USB printers. So I was mainly hoping just to find some instructions that will be talking in terms of the equipment I will actually be using.

with win7 if 64bit, you have to load 32bit drivers on it to share with 32bit os's. also, usernames and passwords must match.
It's been a while since I shared a printer from a linux box, always did it from a win box which is easy.

for suse, here's a link.
http://opensuse.swerdna.org/suseprintipp.html
http://opensuse.swerdna.org/susesambaprint_1.html

for ubuntu
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkPrintingWithUbuntu
http://superuser.com/questions/94552/how...nd-to-other-ubu
http://www.liberiangeek.net/2010/12/share-printer-ubuntu-10-0410-10-maverick-meerkat-windows-print/

Assuming the printer has Linux drivers--it's still not uncommon for certain printers to have no Linux drivers, or have drivers that are difficult to track down--you can apparently share it just like in Windows using Samba.

Or you can set up a print server using CUPS (which is probably already installed in a typical Linux system). Connect to the machine in a browser using port 631 (e.g. http://localhost:631) to access the CUPS configuration.

I can't go into detail, since I've never done a shared printer. Maybe I'll try it out just for the experience...

wait...these CUPS "print server" instructions I found still say to install printer drivers for it on the windows machine(s). That doesn't sound like a print server to me...sounds like a shared printer.

you have to install drivers regardless.
whether a actual printserver, you will need drivers.
or shared from a pc you will need drivers.
on a windows pc sharing, the drivers will be installed from the pc sharing it unless pc's are different bits 32 or 64.

This is something I'm interested in. I have yet to hook up a laser printer I purchased. It doesn't have support in the Open Printing, but does supply Linux drivers seperately (Samsung). Idealy, I would have it hooked up to the file/media server running Ubuntu, and then send print jobs to it remotely.