I haven't had trouble with printing in years- in fact, I can basically print on everything with no configuration, and people with OS X and Windows laptops seem to have lots of problems.
While this is another 'Well, works for me" kind of response, I've never had a problem printing from a laptop with OS X. Windows, yes. But OS X generally just finds the printer and goes, with no configuration necessary at all.
Aren't most Linux distributions still using CUPS, the system OS X uses under the hood?
(More on topic for the actual post here, the last couple of times I've tried to install Linux on a laptop getting wifi going has been a bit finicky, but usually so has getting things like booting into a GUI. I've attributed that less to Linux than to me trying to stick it on obsolete Apple hardware, though.)
I was just printing on someone else's computer running barebones Lubuntu. I found that going to localhost:631 (cups web admin) has all the settings needed to add the printer, which came up as "Detected network printers". I think the OSX one has a GUI frontend for that. I just tested the GNOME gui on my laptop, it doesn't seem to detect the printer but localhost:631 does.
That's strange, since GNU/Linux and OS X both (last I checked) use CUPS for printing.
That said, it really depends on what printer(s) you buy. I've had wonderful experiences with HP printers, and tend to recommend them. Brother, Konica Minolta, and Epson printers work reasonably well with some tinkering and research in my experience.
Is there any sort of certification scheme for CUPS? Given that's the standard for Mac and Linux, I'm surprised companies don't make 'CUPS compliant' printers.
I see a lot of recommendations for Brother printers, but they seem to require quite an involved process to set up.
My Lexmark X4850 begs to differ. No drivers, doesn't work, period. Lexmark doesn't care, and apparently no Linux driver developers have this printer, so no one has made support for it yet.
