I was walking home yesterday and I just happened to come across an HP LaserJet p2035n sitting by the dumpster, waiting to be taken away. I've never owned a printer, but this thing looked like it came from an era when such devices were made to be reliable instead of forcing DRM-locked cartridges, so I picked it up and took it with me. After getting situated I started some online research and I figure this brand of printers was manufactured from about 2008-2012, and my printer has a 2012 date.
As it turns out, this tossed printer works perfectly fine. I plugged it into power and ran a test sheet, and it prints almost perfectly. I plugged it via USB-B into my PC running Fedora 41 and immediately it gets picked up and added as usable printer. I then plugged the printer into its Ethernet port and fortunately this thing is new enough to have Bonjour (i.e. mdns) services so once again my PC just immediately finds it and can print. Awesome!
My laptop is a MacBook. While it did detect the printer over the network, it couldn't add the printer because it couldn't find a driver to operate it. I honestly don't understand why that's a problem since I assume macOS also uses CUPS just like Linux. But at any rate, I found the solution:
With CUPS on Linux I can share the printer. After configuring firewall-cmd to allow the ipp service now my iPhone and my MacBook can also print to the shared printer using the generic PostScript driver. So, in conclusion, Linux helped me 1) use this printer with no additional effort of installing drivers, 2) share this printer to devices which were not plug-and-play ready, and 3) print pics of Goku and Vegeta. As always, I love Linux.
@GnuLinuxDude I mostly use HP printers because with Linux they are always plug-in-play and because although they will provide a message telling me my ink is cheap third party ink, they will none the less accept and print with it.
The model I previously used, HP OfficeJet 5258 All-in-One Printer, the printer always worked well but the scanners kept breaking. I went through four of these before I tried an Epson. The Epson initially worked with 3rd party ink then after a software update didn't so at that point I trashed it and bought another HP, this time a HP OfficeJet 8015e Wireless Color All-in-One Printer which is much more robustly constructed. In fact while taking it out of the box, I accidentally dropped it from chest level and all it did was bounce, no pieces broke off, nothing. So far it has been reliable both for scanning and printing although the scanner is easier to jam but at least it doesn't break in the process of my unjamming it.
Infuriating!