DIY is difficult
Well, arguably it’s difficult at first then become much easier BUT I understand one might not want to dedicate time to it. There are solutions though to buy hardware that is open hardware and with open-source firmware. I personally do NOT recommend reverse engineering except for the pursuit of knowledge. I do NOT recommend RE for “liberating” products because even though it is amazing, it is adversarial. The companies are making money still while NOT supporting Linux or even preventing it from being supported by the community without them spending a cent. That’s fine, that’s their strategy. I don’t approve of it but from a business standpoint I can understand it.
What I do recommend though is spending few minutes looking for proper alternatives. I clarified that a bit in another thread about inputs, cf https://lemmy.world/comment/12550034 so please consider having a look.
TL;DR: DIY/RE can be too much work but there are open hardware with open-source firmware projects sold on e.g https://crowdsupply.com which are “just” plug&play.
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.