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.
