I fear my printer is dying or is practically dead. Is there a basic desktop printer that works well with linux, something that hopefully is autodetected and ready to go?
I don't know if HP is a great printer, but I tend to stick with the same model that gives me some good luck. May or may not be smart, but I just do.
Anyway, any good HP printers? I really just print basic sheets, maybe email, or a story/document, or a cd cover, and 99% with just black ink. So, I don't need anything fancy that can do a hundred things.

Go to http://www.linuxprinting.org/ and search for printers. Since you print out documents, buy laser printers instead of ink jet printers. Ink jet printers cost more to maintain than laser printers. Laser printers prints documents faster than ink jet printers.

I'd recommend the newer HP 8250. I own one and it's great. Very fast, and it uses multiple inks which cost ~$10 each. Mandriva 2006 will support it (can't remember which device I had to define it as) with the hplip driver set. Newer drivers can be downloaded for better support (printer came out after 2k6 was released), but Mandriva supports it well enough.

The built-in card reader is automatically setup with mtools and automounting on card insertion, so you can read memory cards from your camera easily. Also, the hplip tools have a gui to monitor ink levels online, which is cool. The only thing I haven't gotten working fully yet is the photo stock tray, but it may be supported by the newer drivers (hasn't been high on my priority list).

Laser looks like a lot of money for someone who isn't getting a lot of cash.
I may try the HP (photosmart?) 8250 sometime soon. Thank you.

Laser printers cost between 100 to 1000 US dollars. Ink jet printers are cheap but the inks are not. You have to either refill or buy more ink after 10 to 30 pages. Refilling the inks and not printing for a while gums up the ink jet printer heads. You can print about 500 to 5000 pages on a laser printer until you have to replace the toner.

I personally use the HP inkjet 3740 myself, I have two and always use to setup Linux on a customer's machine. The newer HP 3930 and 3940 work also. Download the latest hplip file from HP's Linux site. As a reminder, there is really only 1 printer manufacturer for Windows, Linux, Mac, UNIX, it's HP !

You are quite right. HP printers seem to be well supported in Linux and the BSDs. Also most Epson printers will work fine.

I still have and occasionally use my old (12 years) Epson 9 pin printer unfortunately for me not on Linux !

I told my dad about my printer, and he mentioned one, and as I was reading what you guys put down, I saw you mentioned the one he talked about "Epson"
just wow. almost like a Criss Angel trick (may be a bad joke, just saw two hours of it on A&E)
Anyway,
how much is this toner?
Yeah, ink is a bit pricy.

Oh, btw, today my printer acted funny. I never saw this before. It sounded like it was printing, but the page was blank and the light flashing.
I then tried again, it started to print, then stopped; few seconds later it continued to print.