In my experience, installing a printer is a lot easier than what you have been
told. Just run "printers" and your printer might appear in the list. Just say,
"yes, that's the one" until it's installed.

If the printer is shared from a different computer on your network, you have to
begin by clicking "network printer," and then it should show up in a few
seconds. Then say, "yes, that's the one..."

It's about two years since I had to use any other approach, and in that time
I've played with at least a dozen versions or distros of Linux.