On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Telecom Tom wrote:
> Apologies in advance: If there's a list where "user" questions should
> be posted, please re-direct this message.
>
> I'm in a group of parent volunteers with background in BSD, Solaris
> and Linux that support the technologies at our children's K-8 school.
> Because of the Windows applications and desktop environment that the
> students are already familiar with, we've been dragged kicking and
> screaming into Bill's World. We learned just enough about Windows to
> implement low-cost peer-to-peer resource sharing in our computer lab,
> which has 30 fat-client Wintel PCs and a HP network printer, along
> with a few other odds-n-ends like a scanner and microscope that are
> attached to a couple of the PCs.
>
> We now want to transition the lab and the rest of the school to a
> thin-client model based on Linux/Wine. For the moment, we'd like to
> leave the lab as it is. It works and we don't want to re-design it
> until we've got thin-clients running in the classrooms.
>
> The first question is, How do we do simple things like printing in a
> classroom? Will we need Samba on the server?
You will need Samba if you want the Windows machines to be able to access
files on the Unix server, yes. Samba can also handle printing to or from a
Windows machine (i.e. Windows client to a Unix server or vice versa).
> Suppose a student in one of the classrooms logs in to the network on a
> thin client. Suppose also that there is a Windows PC in the classroom,
> with a Lexmark Z11 attached to the PC. What do we have to so they can
> print to the Z11 in the classroom rather than to the network printer
> in the lab?
You can use a login script to organise all that; just set a default
printer based on which machine the user is logging in on. (e.g. call the
lab machines lab-1, lab-2 etc, then check if the machine is called lab-*
or not and set the default printer accordingly).
James.
