Originally I tried (I don’t know why, so don’t ask) to share the printer over the samba share that I currently have in place on the network, as it seemed a good idea…at the time, I know no that it’s something that should never be attempted (currently).

After many tedious tweakings of many various things, and still no printing across the network. I finally stumbled across this thread on the forums which I followed, and happily…it worked!!! I now have printing across the network. I checked by printing a test page from my laptop (Ubuntu) and then an XP desktop downstairs.

After all that effort of trying to share the printer via samba, it turns out that I managed to share it using ipp – which even Windows supports (though not many people seem to know about that). I think that the main issue I was having is that searching for how to share a printer via Ubuntu gave GUI options suited to the desktop, and not Ubuntu Server – which is CLI only, so I had to edit

Anyway – it works now, I’m happy – and the rest of the family is happy too, and it’s 10x more convenient than before.