> Does anybody have any thoughts? > > [As a further point, I would also be interested in setting up internet > connection sharing through the same machine, but it's not as necessary. > Would this change the decision?]
It can be done in debian by installing debian base, then apt-get installing samba, cups|lpr|<print server> The reason i mention this is more because debian has pppconfig which means setting up a net connection is very simple and its config tools wont be too slow on a 486. Once you have debian base installed, apt-get install swat, and webmin which will allow you to configure samba for printer sharing via a web browser which will be dead easy. The hardest part will be setting up the actual printer but i'm told that cups makes that easy nowadays. If you need help with cups, theres the linux printing howto which iirc details setting up printers http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO/index.html and for sharing your connection on debian you need a script to enable masquarading which is detailed in http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/IPCHAINS-HOWTO.html Debian is quite hard to get to grips to at times but for a 486 with limited ram, it will probably be the fastes to configure and it is certainly the smallest. webmin, swat et all give you a very intuitive interface which is comparible to most ui's in more 'hip' distrobutions such as suse. swat incidentally is the gui that comes with samba, and it generally makes an easy and generally fairly good job of configuring samba, shares, printers etc. and has good documentation. www.samba.org has a very good guide to setting up samba as well as an online version of the orielly book. pppconfig will allow you to set up ppp connections with ease and allows easy configuration of dial on demand, persistant connections and the like. I'm sure suse/redhat et all have something similar nowadays too. HTH David -------------------------------------------------------------------- http://www.lug.org.uk http://www.linuxportal.co.uk http://www.linuxjob.co.uk http://www.linuxshop.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------
