Hello everyone! I am genuinely at my wits end with this printer. My parents have this HP printer (Deskjet-4100 825F4A) that they bought back in late 2021, early 2022 that just never wants to cooperate.
Back on their windows computer it never worked. It was a miracle to get it to print at all. You had to constantly unplug it, plug it back in, unplug it again, use a USB cable, but also NOT use a USB cable, it would never wake from sleep so you had to unplug it again...it was a nightmare.
When I switched them to Zorin, the instant I set it up it printed. I thought: finally the problem solved! But the moment they shut the computer down for the day and started the next day, it wasn't working. Zorin would pick it up, but it wouldn't print. Unplugging and re-plugging it in would work sometimes, but it was constant. It got to a rigamarole status with this thing. Now, it just doesn't print at all. Zorin still sees it, but its status is stuck on "Getting Printer info...", and the HPLP app has never been able to pick it up.
I know people on this forum say HP is very supportive of Linux, but I don't know which one would be best and I would honestly love to avoid these issues going forward. Especially since this is my parents computer and having it just work would be awesome. They just need to print and scan documents reliably. Could any of you fine folks here recommend a reliable, supported printer and scanner?
Can't recommend Canon highly enough. In the early days of my foray into GNU/Linux there wasn't a dedicated driver for our Canon i865. The workaround? I looked at what printers the cartridges worked with. I spotted that the worked with BJC-8800. Installing the driver for the 8800 meant I could print to the i865. If you go to the Canon website you download the IJ .deb file and if an all-in-one, you download the scangear .deb file. I covered how to install Canon printer driver in the unofficial manual for Zorin 17.
I have an older HP Laserjet 2600n and newer HP 6940 which is about 5 years old and they always work. The only distribution I had problems with on the 2600n was Solus, about 5 years ago.
From my current experience, Zorin and Mint work great with HP printers. Plus HP has a dedicated Linux app which I don’t even use.
I would never recommend getting a HP to anyone, as a company they are terrible and their ethos in the printer division is abysmal. Everything is about tracking you, monitoring you, making you sign up an account, subscribe to ink, subscribe for paper, etc. etc. That said, I have a HP ENVY Photo 6234 which I only bought because my old printer died and it was on offer, and I've had no issues with it since moving to linux using native print drivers despite it being a bit finicky on Windows with the official HP drivers and software.
They're expensive, but I hear nothing but good things about Brother - both in terms of printing and the company. Canon are a close second.
HP's printer department are basically what would happen if the worst parts of Microsoft and Google and a baby and Satan blessed that disgusting spawn with all the evil at his disposal.
You will need to get off the complete grid to avoid data collection or business intelligence. Electricity, phone, internet, auto insurance, home insurance, mortgage insurance, mortgage, banking, credit cards, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Target.com, life insurance, health insurance, water utility, email, and mail just to name a few. Hey, I like my HP printer and I have a subscription too!
Sure, completely avoiding data collection and privacy invasion is pretty much impossible in today's world unless you completely abandon society, but that's clearly not what I was talking about. There are scales to things; it's not a toggle switch with only two states of "good" and "evil".
HP's "Smart" app doesn't let you scan unless you register an account with them. Why? It certainly has nothing to do with scanning from your device, that works fine via other software. It's because HP chose to be one of the worst printer companies in the world.
If you're happy using HP printers, with all that entails, that's fine; I'm not telling you to stop. I just said I'd never recommend HP printers to anyone, ever, because they're the worst printer company on the market as far as I'm aware, by a large margin. Please don't try to incite drama by exaggerating and making up things you think I said.