Is there a way to print from Windows 98 using CUPS?

[Karl Scheel]

Greetings CUPS enthusiasts! :-)

I recently trashed my Epson Color Stylus 640 and am currently in the market for both a colour laser printer. My computer is a dual-booting stand-alone and configured as follows:

-hda with SuSE Linux Professional 9.0,
-hdb with Windows 98 (First Edition).

The laser printer that I am interested in (i.e., Lexmark C524dn) supports SuSE Linux Professional 9.0, 9.1, and 9.2 and understands both PostScript and PCL. However, only the second edition of Windows 98 is supported. Although an XP driver is available, I absolutely refuse to purchase Windows XP in order to resolve this problem--especially since I now find myself using Windows applications less and less.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that if I were to use CUPS + SAMBA for print jobs originating within Windows, it could only be accomplished using two separate boxes networked together (i.e., one configured as a Linux print server, and the other as a Windows client). This is because in this scenario, both operating systems would likely need to run simultaneously in order to send and accept print jobs. If possible, I would like to avoid having to set-up separate boxes for Linux and Windows--at least for the time being.

In the meantime, I could theoretically do the following:

1. manually install and set as default any PostScript colour inkjet printer driver in Windows (i.e., to yield a dummy PostScript printer),
2. print a document from any Windows application to file exclusively,
4. reboot in Linux,
5. mount the Windows partition,
6. search for the PostScript file just printed,
7. click on the file to launch it within Ghostview,
8. print the file from within Ghostview.

However, this approach would waste a great deal of my time--especially if I find myself having to go back to the Windows application to make changes to the document just printed! :-(

I am wondering if it would be possible to configure my system to print to my future colour laser printer from within Windows 98 using CUPS (i.e., with or without SAMBA). If there is a version of CUPS available for Windows 98 that could run independently (i.e., does not need Linux), that would be great. If not, is there a way to configure CUPS + SAMBA on a single computer so that Linux doesn't need to be running to print from a Windows 95/98 application?

Any advice on this subject would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much, and have a nice day! ;-)

Karl