CUPS is more than just a print spooling system. It is a complete printer management system that complies with the new Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). IPP is an industry and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for network printing. Many of its functions can be managed remotely (or locally) via a Web browser (giving you platform-independent access to the CUPS print server). Additionally, it has the traditional command line and several more modern GUI interfaces (GUI interfaces developed by third parties, like KDE's overwhelming KDEPrint).

CUPS allows creation of raw printers (i.e., no print file format translation) as well as smart printers (i.e., CUPS does file format conversion as required for the printer). In many ways, this gives CUPS capabilities similar to the MS Windows print monitoring system. Of course, if you are a CUPS advocate, you would argue that CUPS is better! In any case, let us now explore how to configure CUPS for interfacing with MS Windows print clients via Samba.