That’s not been my experience.

Granted, printers suuuuuck. But I was legit surprised when both the printing and scanning functions in Linux were hands down better than windows.

It is way easier than anything else.

Is printing cumbersome and difficult on Linux? Yes, it can be. Is it better than Windows? Also yes.

my experience is that through network, it’s just flawless. I turned on my printer and sure there it was. (though this feature just became a huge issue recently :P)

I think that used to be the case more than it is now. Linux now uses the same printing system (CUPS) as macOS, and macOS printing has to work or Apple’s customers would be unsatisfied.

thats just cuz printers generally suck

It used to be much, much more difficult than it is today, but your experiences will still vary according to what type of printer you have. The problem is drivers. There are still printers out there that have no working Linux driver (mostly old, non-Postscript-supporting, with no Mac drivers either). Some will work with a generic driver, but some features aren’t available. The more annoying case is the one where the manufacturer put out a driver once, many years ago, it doesn’t work properly with modern versions of CUPS, and they can’t be arsed to revise it.

But most printers these days will do basic one-sided 100%-size prints out of the box, and that’s all many people need.

my printer spits out page upon page of random characters and mess when I try to print from my desktop, gave up and use my phone now

I haven’t used a new printer or an inkjet in a number of years now, but using my 18yo HP laserjet is a matter of plugging it in and checking it’s status under the main distro settings menu. That was also on par with the windows process iirc.

I do remember 20 years ago when I had to sideload pcmcia wifi drivers, though.

Any problem I’ve ever had printing is almost exclusively a problem with the printer, it’s usually yellow or cyan. Doesn’t matter the document is black&white.

HP Laser 107w, driverless, over LAN.

I just Ctrl+P from any software and it prints.

It also prints programmatically (for e.g. folk.computer ) thanks to IPP.

I didn’t have to “think about printing” since I have that setup so I don’t know where you get that sentiment.

I use printer with a USB personally. No issues with that but I got an HP printer that is really weird with the network stuff

The Canon Pixma has always problematic for me with driver issues.

You’re printin experience within Linix is going to entirely depend on which printer you have. Some work out of the box immediately others take hours to get working and digging through forums looking for drivers.

It was terrible in the 90’s. Since CUPS became standard around 2000 it’s significantly easier.