Well, I figure with CUPS (the printer system currently used by macOS and GNU/Linux and other open source Un_x systems), it is the responsibility of CUPS to supp

Well, I figure with CUPS (the printer system currently used by macOS and GNU/Linux and other open source Un_x systems), it is the responsibility of CUPS to support printers, while on Windows, it is the responsibility of printer manufacturers to supply drivers for their printers. Well, guess what - vendor-supplied drivers suck donkey-balls, while third-party drivers (as supplied by CUPS or GhostScript) focus on supporting the functionality the printer in question provides and nothing else. It's the same as with GPUs, except that printers are (AFAICT) less complicated than GPUs. In theory, Windows can do some things you can not replicate on GNU/Linux and/or macOS without major pain - e.g. that client submit their print jobs in b/w unless specifically requested otherwise (because on our support contract, color printing costs ~10x as much per page as b/w). In practice, though, it works about as reliably as trying to photograph a specific star in the sky while blindfolded and with - at best - a fuzzy idea what day it is. People keep telling me that Windows is a superior OS for desktop systems because it "just works", but clearly those people do not do a lot of printing. ;-)