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CUPS drivers are only used on OS X when there aren’t any official drivers made available by the vendor. That’s mostly the case for very old printers (pre-OS X or non-USB). With CUPS drivers, you can get a printer to work, but the experience is nowhere near as good as using official drivers. So no, printer support on OS X and Linux is not equal.

Sure. I've used Linux on the desktop since then. Even with printers it was still hit or miss. CUPS just acted as a catch-all, lowest-common-denominator of printing.

I'm pretty familiar with CUPS, too. I helped build a school-wide printing system at my university based off CUPS as part of my job at the time. It had to interface with our internal authentication system, debit student printing credits, and interface with dozens of types of printers across campus.

Spectacular, but not reference. General printing is OK for almost any printer, but support for advanced features is limited (in my experience).