the printer. The consequence of this is that the password will be exposed in 

several CUPS configuration files.

While planning this has to be taken into account, the way around exposing 

passwords is either making printers unauthenticated (that is, available to 

everyone) or creating a special printer user for each printer and only 

incorporating this special user on those clients that need to print to the server.

Print server vs. direct printing

Using CUPS it is possible to use the domain print servers or print directly to the 

network interface of the printer (if available). Usually if all clients already in the 

domain use print servers it is good to follow this principle for the Linux clients as 

well.

The advantages of using the print servers are:

Single type of prints. There is no difference between 

Windows prints

 and 

Linux prints

.

Administratively the printer is controlled from the print server, so when it 

needs to be rerouted or disabled this is done for all clients

CUPS and model/driver for your printer

There is quite a big difference in the models and drivers included in CUPS in the 

different distributions. So this is one of the most important things to check. 

Also, if your printer is old, or used by very few people, then decisions have to be 

made about how much to invest to get it working on Linux clients. The investment 

for a new printer that works  out of the box  might be a lot less than to get older 

models to work.

4.2.5  DHCP and DNS configuration

In almost all cases, using DHCP and DNS from a Windows domain will work 

without problems. This is completely transparent to the end user. Once 

configured correctly for the Linux client, both protocols should work without any 

problems.

However, some care has to be taken when using DHCP and X11. The Linux 

client generally accepts host names from DHCP. If this occurs after X11 has 

started and the user is logged on, then new applications may have trouble 

opening Xauth issues.

Planning tip:

 Make sure a DHCP host name is accepted by the Linux client 

before starting X11 or logging on graphically.

50 

Linux Client Migration Cookbook   A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux