>Although you would use ghostscript to generate the PDF files, Samba would just give you the connectivity to the Windows network.

Yor are seeing it, Adobe doesnt allow someone to use their driver as a network driver, that sort of use is against their EULA so you option is usually to install a local copy of adobe to every workstation.
This option gives you a shared solution, ease of installation on workstations, and an inexpensive option to Adobe Acrobat or the other windows pdc creators out there.
Sure it might be an hour of my time fiddeling with the server / Ghostscript files, to get it all working, but then what 40 users having a pdf writer for free. To me, thats worth it.

Bob