They work better in Linux than Windows, not to mention backwards compatibility.
EDIT: I may be wrong about newest printer models, 2020 and above.
EDIT2: Hardware problems are an entirely different issue.
CUPS is horrible, and also had its share of critical vulnerabilities. It is just better than the LPD mess we had before.
It is not a Linux specific thing - it was developed when there still were a lot of UNIX variants around. Apple was a very early contributor, and had quite a bit of influence in making it successful.