Basically title, but I can provide some information.
I’m looking to spend no more than $300 or so. I’m not well versed in different filaments (I’ll be honest, I know nothing) or really anything about 3d printing, but I want to be able to print cup holders for someone I know whose vehicle has none, I imagine heat resistance and strength would be important there. I also do robotics now and would like to be able to make my own small robot chassis and parts. I’m also a Linux user and like FOSS, which I believe is fairly compatible with 3d printing, so I would like to find a printer that doesn’t make me use proprietary software and that I can use with Fedora Linux without too much hassle. I know I’m new to this, and I know I’m in other hobbies where people post things like: “I want to spend no more than 6 dollars to get artificial superintelligence running on an Arduino Nano,” so I hope this isn’t that, and sorry if it is. Thanks in advance.
The Ender and creality are good systems. But as you said they do require a lot of tinkering. My very technically inclined brother-in-law got an Ender last year. And had a very bad time with it because of all the faffing about you had to do. Conversely this year I got an a1. And it’s more or less been point and click. There’s plenty of other technical stuff to get into with it. Such as filament types feeds and speeds and heats. Supports and infills. Which it also helps out quite a bit with. But there’s more than enough to learn just picking it up