Eric S. Raymond was right about CUPS some fourteen years ago, in his essay
"The Luxury of Ignorance" (http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html),
and things really haven't gotten any better.  Here's an update since I last
posted about six weeks ago.

I had an HP LaserJet 1100a, which worked reasonably well until its internal
memory went bad.  These things happen.  So I got a more recent HP Pro 1102w
which is no end of trouble;

Ah yes, the "modem testing problem" redux.
I've had good luck with an HP "Color LaserJetPro MFP M177fw", but I don't enjoy a system where you buy a printer and only then find out if you have to return it or not.

--dave

 I could print to it a bit, irregularly, but now
not at all -- everything seems to be configured properly but CUPS reports 
"Waiting for printer to become available" and nothing I do, from writing
udev rules to rebooting, makes it available.  So I bought another printer, a 
Lexmark MS415dn, in part for its three-penguin rating [ = "works perfectly 
with Linux"] on openprinting.org, but it does not work perfectly, spitting 
out endless pages of gibberish when I sent it PDFs or PostScript files, to 
the point where it prints only once out of every two or three attempts.  I
won't go through all the details of what I've tried, but I have tried, and
tried, and tried.

More or less at my wit's end -- actually, I can see my wit's end receding
in the distance in the rear-view mirror -- and proving that I cannot learn
from experience, I'm considering buying something that should just work,
that is, of getting a monochrome single-function laser printer with embedded 
PostScript to handle my needs, which, you'd think, would be a sufficiently 
humble set of requirements.  You'd think.  If anyone on this list can recommend 
such a beast, which can run reliably under Linux (specifically arch linux), I 
would be almost shamefully greatful.  Nearly as good would be cautions about
what to avoid.  Thanks.

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-- 
David Collier-Brown,         | Always do right. This will gratify
System Programmer and Author | some people and astonish the rest
dave.collier-brown@indexexchange.com |              -- Mark Twain

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