I don't know if all Linux distros are created equal where printers are concerned so I come to you all for advice.
I have a HP Officejet 3830 all-in-one printer. I used to run Ubuntu 16.04. On installation this printer was set up and ran flawlessly. This was great because I am not capable of understanding the packages and configuration steps to manually install a printer. But now that I have installed Ubuntu 20.04 this printer know longer works properly. And as far as I have learned this can not be corrected because one of this supporting packages that works with HPLIP (I think it is python) does not support this printer. Soooo, I am wondering if I can find a distro that DOES support my printer properly. Buying a new printer is not and option. Ubuntu 16.04 is no longer supported by the powers that be. I wonder why the software in Ubuntu 16.04 can not be installed on Ubuntu 20.04 but they tell me this will not work. So I am asking the gurus what they would do in this situation. I will try any other distro with the only other preferred requirement being .Deb package installation. I'm not really good at building packages.

first of all you need to check it that printer was supported: https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-i..._devices/index

That version of Ubuntu should come with version 3.20.3 of hplip and any version later than 3.15 will support that printer. This page shows the requirements for the hplip version, so you can use your package manager to make sure that you've actually got everything — boring but easy.
https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/20.04/ubuntu...amd64.deb.html

Likely any mainstream distro will support your printer. Every distro I've used, and that's most of the mainstream ones, has HPLIP. If it's not included in the initial install, it's available in the repos.

It seemed as though I was missing PYTHON 3-3.9 and PYTHON 3-3.8. I installed them through synaptic.
It seems that the printer now works. We'll see.

This was interesting. I have never chased down dependencies before. Now I understand the process. Thanks. And again...We'll see.

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, its an improvement but still not right. When working properly I have two printer links to click on in my dialog box. One is for fax and the other is for print. If I turn the printer on and then turn the computer on the printer works when I click on the printer link. If I turn the computer on and then turn the printer on I have no printer link but I do have the fax link. And if I then click on the fax link it says "getting printer info", which it never accomplishes. Also, the printer now takes a long time to shut down.
Any thoughts on this?