The main purpose of Samba is to share from Unix or Linux to Windows or to share from Windows to Unix or Linux. Unix File Systems do not work will with Windows file systems. Samba incorporates a CIFS structure that is useable on both ends. You should have a smb.conf file that was created in the lib directory of your Samba installation. In that file you can set up share access to any directories/printers you wish the Windows machines to see that are local to the Linux server. By making these shares available you can give them user level security (account and password must exist on Linux server) domain level security (any Windows machine that belongs to the domain you joined can access the shares). There are a couple of others also, but these are the easiest security levels. It sounds like you would want to start with domain level. You just have to be aware that any one in the domain will see those shares. You may also want to use SWAT to make changes to Samba (it is a Web GUI for modifying the Samba configuration). I suggest that you review O'Reilly's Using Samba. It covers pretty much everything you need to get started.
To set up a network printer use the print tool on your control panel. Just fill in the blanks for creating a printer. Identify the printer as a network printer (raw device). The server should be the machine that will handle spooling for the printer (not your local host). If the printer has no queue server and spools locally then you can put in the IP address of the printer for the server if it has a Jet Direct card.
If you don't already have network printing set up at the site go to www.hp.com and download the latest version of JetDirect. Install this on the Linux server or any server you want to act as your network print server.
Once you have network printing set up you can print to it by dropping any item on the printer icon in the GUI desktop or by u
