This section is, by definition, incomplete. Feel free to send in details of your favourite distribution.
Red Hat has a GUI printer administration tool (in the control panel)
which can add remote printers and printers on local devices. It lets
you choose a ghostscript-supported printer type and Unix device file
to print to, then installs a print queue in /etc/printcap and
writes a short PostScript-and-ascii magic filter based around gs
and
nenscript.
This solution works fairly well, and is trivial to setup for common
cases.
Where Red Hat fails is when you have a printer which isn't supported by their standard Ghostscript (which is GNU rather than aladdin Ghostscript, and which supports fewer printers). Check in the printer-specific notes above and on the ghostscript printer compatibility page if you find that you can't print at the full capability of your printer with the stock Red Hat software.
Debian offers a choice between plain lpd and LPRng; LPRng is probably a better choice unless your needs are simple (ie one printer on a parallel port). I believe Debian also offers a choice of script-based printer configuration tools like the magicfilter and APC Filter packages; try using one of those.
Please send me info on what other distributions do!