Recommendations: CUPS, LPRNG or plain old lpd?

[Shyamal Prasad <shyamal.prasad@sbcglobal.net>]

Hi,


For reasons described below it might now a good time for me to learn
CUPS and/or LPRng. I am looking for recommendations from Debian users
of CUPS/LPRng on the benefits of switching to either one of
these. I've used lpd for at least 8 years on Linux, and I'm looking
for something "better", or maybe just "different"....

Background:

I have a Debian Woody system, A Mac OS X system, and two laptops
running Windows 98 (one of them dual boots to Woody). A private home
LAN with wireless access for the laptops. I have an old HP Deskjet
printer, and I am planning on buying a network based laser printer in
the coming months. The Mac replaced an old Windows 95 IBM PC which
used the printer until yesterday. That PC will probably be retired (or
will run GNU/Hurd, or something sufficiently experimental).

The Deskjet is now going to go on my Woody machine's parallel port,
since this machine is the only one running 24x7 and the Mac has no
parallel port. I would like to be able to print to this thing from the
Woody machine, the Mac and the Wintel systems over the network, until
the laser printer comes in. I can make this work with lpd etc. but it
seemed like a good time to improve some skills.

Thanks a bunch!
Shyamal