I've been running my little HP Deskjet F2280 with only black cartridges for a while because I have zero interest in printing photos or colour documents.  This works brilliantly in Windows 10 or Linux if you are printing basic things such as letters.  HP actually warn that the Microsoft drivers will provide only basic functionality.  (I guess this means printing out letters and shopping lists!)

Yesterday I was wanting to print a pdf that had a mix of black print, some colour elements at the top, and a middle section which was in a light grey and beige type tones.  I am guessing it would have printed perfectly well in linux or Windows 10 if I had both the black and colour cartridges installed, but there was no way it would print in Windows 10 or Ubuntu.  It would print the top of the document with the coloured elements just fine in a grey tone and the bottom of the document printed well - the middle was totally blank!  The Linux HP doctor complained about missing items.  If it had not printed the coloured elements at the top of the page I would have given up much quicker.

Anyway, once I had downloaded the full HP software a 177 mb download, the document printed just fine.  I was able to select single cartridge mode and select black ink only.  

You may ask why use such an old model.  It gets very light use and works perfectly (for letters) in every linux distro I've tried & cartridges are still available.

If this printer dies I may well buy a little Brother laser printer I think.