Remember that these are almost all reports voluntarily submitted by
users. If it's mostly old hardware, that's because few people with new
hardware are submitting reports for that hardware. We can't force anyone
to submit reports, and we usually can't get new hardware to generate
reports on ourselves. Though, to be fair, the reports from the mailing
list haven't been added in a while, so that might also be part of it.
> However,
> there are LOTS of machines that you could only find on eBay and many/most
> lack sufficient memory, BIOS, or current chipset support for the current
> Qubes R4.x system being developed. Old systems on the HCL are seemingly
> never updated, so you can't tell which ones are still working and which
> ones have retired years ago. There are many items on that list even in the
> wrong categories (e.g. DIY System boards in the Desktop section when there
> is a separate section just for those) and I see no defined process by which
> to help change that.
>
> My question is this: What would it take to get a set of simple filter
> options on that HCL webpage?
This open issue is very similar to what you're asking:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/3795
I've just opened two PRs (linked to this issue) that make the HCL tables
sortable. However, some rows break on sorting. Please see the issue
comments for more details and an image showing exactly how it breaks. If
you can help with this, please let me know on that issue.
> Or, is there a way for someone to help clean
> up and better organize this list?
>
There are two main ways you can help:
1. Help un-break the aforementioned sorting, or provide a better way to
sort or filter the tables.
2. Submit a PR that modifies or removes old or bad HCL entries:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-hcl/tree/master
> Going forward it is not all that helpful to see what was historically
> running, years ago, if they are no longer adequate for the current Qubes
> R4.x baseline. My inclination is this lists' primary function should be to
> support those who are looking for some adequate hardware that could run the
> current baseline, and failing that test, it should be filtered out by
> default. Or maybe just filter by date added/updated?
>
I can understand the motivation behind removing old entries for EOL
Qubes releases. If those entries are truly of no use to anyone, then
there is not much reason to keep them around. But perhaps there's some
value in keeping the old entries that we're overlooking. I'm curious
whether Chris and Marek have any opinions on this.
Another idea is to have separate HCL tables for each Qubes release, or
even entirely separate HCL *pages* for each Qubes release. This might
make sense as part of our plan for release-specific documentation:
https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/5308
> Another thought is we should actively request those who successfully
> upgrade their systems to the latest baseline to resubmit their HCL thus
> showing that the same system is still capable of running the latest
> baseline number. I know matching old and new HCL reports would require some
> work, but I think if you want Qubes to be more popular this is a must.
>
We can request it, but I'm not sure how much uptake we'll get. In
practice, someone would probably have to volunteer to take on the task
of making these requests. Alternatively, we could suggest in the HCL
documentation something like, "If you're interested in a model, but the
HCL report is out-of-date, try asking the reporter to update their report."
Theoretically, there could be an automated system that emails people to
ask them to update their reports periodically (annually, for example),
but again, someone would have to volunteer to help set up such a system.
> At the very least the list should have a way to display only those
> currently running R4.x.x by default, but then let someone tweak the filter
> settings to look at older hardware if they choose to do so.
>
Would be good, but we need help with the code (see above).