THis is along the lines of what I was going to respond to this article. I use CUPS and switched to it from the standard LPR/LPQ suite because it was easier to get working for both locally attached printers and already networked printers (the JetPrint kind, which are very popular).
But Mr Raymond is far from a non-techy by almost any definition. If instructions were written to his level there would still be a vastly greater pool of less experienced computer users who would still not be able to understand them. Until foss software becomes usable by that group, the averge home computer user, making it understandable to the rarified air of Mr Raymond's level will do little to widely advance its implementation.
I find that most user interfaces to the operating system (no matter whose operating system) are rife with 'insider' detail.
Networked systems today are a hodge podge of historical legacy that makes no current sense mixed alongside new ideas to overcome that situation but done with the same handicap's of living in a complex 'evolved or constructed' world of many parts that were not originally designed to fit together.
The best example of a system that got it right with printers was the original Macintosh implementation of appletalk.* But since the Mac has had to accomodate TCP/IP and a host of other ideas such as Win Printers and JetDirects, it's easy of use has degraded significantly.
*Actually, WANG get it better with WANGNET, but most of you don't know anything about it I would guess. WANG computers could discover the printers and not only query them on their capabilities but download new micro-code to bring them up to date. Current printer drivers were always attached to your word processor code for whatever printer you selected. The end user always knew where the print output was going and what it would look like without doing anything more then selecting a printer from a list.
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