The last time I tried to get printers working under linux was back in 98, I tried to get our HP deskjet 660C working... It was a hopeless. after many hours of stuffing around I managed to break the firmware and get a crap quality print that made our old dotmatrix look good.
Fred told me that he got an Epson Stylus C60 working without any pain whatsoever. That was like a red rag to a bull. That night I bought a C61 and downloaded the CUPS software.
apt-get install cupsys cupsys-driver-gimpprint cupsys-client foomatic-gui
The hotplug USB subsystem detected the printer straight out! I logged into the cups built in web server (on port 631) and told it I had a new printer. It asked me what sort of printer it was (I think it should be able to do this itself, but that's probably another year of work away) and I filled out the various layers of questions about brands and models (there's probably a thousand printers supported!).
I clicked the print test page and sure enough a test page shot out of the printer. I then tried to print a postscript file. nothing happened. after some investigation I worked out that I need to provide bsd-like versions of the interface software:
apt-get install cupsys-bsd
That's it - everything that can print to lpr can print on our computer! I haven't tried setting up lynne's iMac to print remotely yet, but that can wait for now.