Out of curiosity, how does CUPS prevent you from printing out code? I can understand that there might be some advanced printing features that don't work perfectly with Linux because of lack of driver support. It's been ages since I last had difficulty with printing text. I've had difficulty with old printers and new Windows versions and vice versa.
It prevents me from printing, period. It's better than it used to be years ago, but still there's ton of work to do every time I want to plug into a new printer, and half of the times it doesn't work. I know that it is probably due to my lack of knowledge and experience, but I'm not frustrated enough to sit down and figure CUPS out for good.
Don't worry, not only CUPS is PITA. Even one unnamed OS with totally different print service randomly decides that your printer is offline (what? it is live on the network, I can ping it! I can restart it million times and the spooler still tells me, that it is offline.), just to annoy you. The more important that printed document is and the less time there is for you to present it, the higher probability, that you will not be able to print it.
I see. Most of the time I'm lucky enough to work with HP printers. The hp-setup tool makes installation of drivers trivial. Once in a while I work with Brother or some other brand of printers, and that can require a little more work.
The last printer that failed on me under CUPS was actually a Brother one. I still haven't figured out why it worked for two days and then stopped; I guess networked printers are tricky.
Under OS X I have good success with brother printers... They usually work for months without fail and then stop working. The only thing that fixes it is to cycle power on the printer. I'm guessing buggy firmware on the printer itself.
