Does anybody know where in the Cups system/docs/website I can find a list of printers supported ?

Because I would like to buy a printer once only, if at all possible!!!!

Apart from which, what's the point of having "documentation" for a printer-control software, that doesn't tell which printers are supported ?

TIA!

try
http://www.openprinting.org/printers
http://www.openprinting.org/drivers

or from your computer
http://localhost:631/

click administration then add printer
and look on the list on the second page

It's funny but I just went through all that today in reality... but initially I bought a Kodak wireless inkjet, and while a couple major distros came close to its driver, none had it. However, I found out through the gracious folks of Puppy Linux that it's a very true fact that one of two printers are almost completely covered in Cups or elsewhere as for the drivers for them and they said "HP" and "brother" printers are the best choice to go with if you most likely want a driver waiting for you when you get home with the printer and set it up. Indeed I bought a nice Brother laser jet printer after returning the crappy Kodak back and sure enough, on the first try Ubuntu nailed the exact driver for it...

I suggest one of those two...

As of this writing the cups and open-printing web sites are down. My Lexmark x544 and E360dn were working fine until software upgrades came out from Cups a number of weeks ago. I chose Lexmark because I found negative comments about brother on numerous web-sites. The Lexmark printers are super - should I go back to Debian 6 to use them?. I also have a Samsung - couldn't get drivers for my distribution a couple of years ago so it is used in another office - a real work horse.

The sites that list supported printers are seldom up-to-date. Think how many manufacturers there are, constantly producing new items.

I think it's safe to assume that anything from HP is supported, and I believe the Samsung Unified Driver covers all their products. For the others, it's best to check before you buy: a search like "lexmark linux drivers" will obviously yield results. Searching this site for a specific printer will reveal if people are having a terrible time with it!

CUPS, of course, only acts as an intermediary in printing: it gets the a pdf file from the application, has it converted into a suitable format, and then passes it to the printer. The job of turning the application output into something suitable for your printer is managed by foomatic and ghostscript. A nice example of the classic Unix approach for divide and conquer.