There is a standard—IPP—and if universally adopted, it would mean plug-and-play printing across all devices and printers without manual driver installation, vendor software, or compatibility headaches.
But printer manufacturers have weak incentives to fully adopt it because proprietary protocols create vendor lock-in and competitive moats.
Standards require either market forces or regulation to overcome individual manufacturer incentives to fragment. IPP is gaining ground—Apple’s AirPrint is basically IPP, forcing many manufacturers to support it—but full adoption isn’t there yet.
The “why don’t we just” question usually has the same answer: because the entities with power to implement the solution benefit from the current fragmentation.
As for the magically moving printers. That is just people being incompetent. If you have a printer you should give it a name according to the room it is in, and your rooms should be labeled sensibly (e.g. have floor number, and cardinal direction based on where the nearest outside wall is facing, etc., in the name.)
Maybe this works: Buy a printer that is known to work correctly with a driver that is included in the Linux kernel.
My Claude says this:
As for the magically moving printers. That is just people being incompetent. If you have a printer you should give it a name according to the room it is in, and your rooms should be labeled sensibly (e.g. have floor number, and cardinal direction based on where the nearest outside wall is facing, etc., in the name.)