Brucehankins we have to trust the team to make the best decisions we can around these issues.
Indeed. And one thing I've learned from this discussion is that getting new .ISOs out sooner will not guarantee that newer computers will be able to install and run Solus. It's not up to Solus to create drivers for the new components.
That said, it's not ideal to have more than a year between .ISO file updates. So, we're actually talking about two parts of the problem. One part the Solus team controls. The other part -- stale drivers that don't support newer hardware -- is not under Solus' control.
I remember going back for many years that word was passed around in forums that this brand of computers was good with Linux, and that brand was best avoided. Apparently that's not changed much. As Tom pointed out, Intel is one good rule of thumb.
It's not very helpful if we need to tell someone with a new laptop that the reason they're having problems getting Solus installed on it is because they bought the wrong brand of computer. But other Linux distros are likely not to work on it, either.
Still, the issue of infrequent releases remains, and that part is under Solus' control. I'm hoping that the team can arrive at some better way of updating .ISO files, and that's what this thread was all about, from the beginning -- coming up with ideas that might make the process more efficient, and thus less work for the team, and at the same time better results for users.
Over the years, I've found that most of the time, our weekly updates go very smoothly. The Solus team can be justifiably proud of that. In fact, that's what I've come to expect when I update a Solus computer. And the Solus team usually knows in advance that an update will be a dangerous one, because of what's been changed upstream. We've often been warned in the forum.
My favorite idea would be generate new .ISO files based on the content of the Solus repository after an update has proven to be relatively trouble-free. Essentially, all Solus users would occasionally become beta testers (or actually, release candidate testers). It would be up to the team to decide whether to do that quarterly, or monthly, or whatever.
