That’s a bit overblown, even on Arch you basically install CUPS, start it, plug in your printer and you’re good to go with most printers, especially IPP ones. Even autodiscovery with mDNS works! Just need to be on the same WiFi network and the printers just show up in the list.
It’s one of the things that usually is a better experience than Windows, because Windows printing is absolutely ancient and hasn’t been upgraded in forever.
Printing on windows is even hard to manage. It’s so bad that MS is just pushing Universal Print, which basically bypasses the decades of printing cruft.
Was going to say that, CUPS is great, have had less issues with printers in linux than windows, worked flawlessly when I was troubleshooting a 20+ year old office grade LaserJet for my in-laws (which turned out to be a weird issue with the hub it was plugged into and windows 10 waking from sleep as far as I could tell) and also just works with the older network laser printer I have now.
This has not been the case for me.
Sometimes it prints, sometimes it prints the first page for however many pages in the document, sometimes it says it prints but does nothing, sometimes it errors, sometimes I have to restart CUPS, sometimes I have to delete the autodiacovered printer and make a new one.
It’s always a drama.
Its funny, I’m currently using popos and my experience printing was easier than windows by a mile. Literally like 2 buttons clicks in the first related menu I found.
Love reading stories like this, shows how amazingly far Linux desktop has come over the last 10 years.
Even Linus had to admit after their botched Linux challenge that printing is just so much easier vs WindowsMy HP laser all-in-one requires an app that I need to log in every week or so to print in Windows and sometimes it simply can’t find the network printer with the fixed IP that’s in the same place as it’s always been
When I switched to mint a couple of weeks ago I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to use it, but I was impressed that Linux was able to find and install the printer and scanner super quickly and never had any issues printing with it
