Another great way to use Linux is for PDF printing for everyone. Instead of spending hundreds for copies of Adobe Acrobat Writer, you may install a Samba style printer on a Linux box and use it as a network PDF printer. You simply will then add the printer on each workstation just the same way as any other network printer. The user will print to this and a few seconds later receive an email containing the printed PDF file.
This can be very important. Recently the lawyers at work discovered a vendor had sent them a MS Word document containing revisions. We had just upgraded the lawyer to Office XP which was showing the revisions by default. He was able to go back and see all the changes and comments to the document sent to him. Of course he then wondered what we sent outbound and could we face issues over this. Acrobat is a "standard" at this point and will not let people modify your Word document and send it on. What you want to print out is all they can ever see. They can't play back your changes.
Rough requirements are as follows: (besides obvious things like working email, etc.)
Add the following to your smb.conf file:
The printer driver line above will let the driver automatically load for each client so you don't have to manually pick a postscript printer.
Copy the print2pdf script to /usr/local/bin, or anywhere else you want to, just configure the print command in the smb.conf to match. Configure the print2pdf script as documented within it.
Now, on a Windows client, you should be able to browse and find the printer. A simple doubleclick on it should add it, and then give it a try. You should see in your email something like the following:
The file looks like this:
Now, none of the fancier features that Acrobat Writer has like thumbnails and signatures are available, but most will not use those features anyways. This will quickly and easily let anyone in your company (or house) print PDF files.