infinitymdm tone doesn't come across too well in text format
truer words.....
just when you think you got yourself figured someone else will see the opposite
New installation method needed?
There are various reasons people buy a shiny new system, with components from the future. One of them is the gamer crowd, but also the artist crowd tends to need all the hot hardware. Especially the 3D modellers.
How about reducing Solus to only one desktop environment (Budgie, as that's the original Solus DE)? You guys would only need to maintain one iso. This should take a considerable amount of pressure away from the team.
Harvey Everyone on the team knows this is a problem. Everyone on the team wants a new release tagged ASAP.
I've accepted Solus as is, warts and all, and that currently changes to hardware can be a tricky, hairpulling affair; and fixing the current problems are probably more trouble than what they are worth.
I'm looking more for the future with the next release so that these types problems can be minimized (still opining for an ISO that automatically runs updates as part of the install).
We'll see what the future brings.
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Not happening.
Having just one DE to support would not make the new ISO appear that much sooner. Having the amount of DE's we do is not actually that big of a deal. Each has its own dedicated maintainer and the team is currently larger than it has ever been.
If you support Budgie its not currently that much more effort to support Gnome or even Mate which does not update very often. Remove anyone's DE of choice and a large amount of people would leave, I know I would resign and move to another distro if Plasma stopped being available. It just does not make sense to take such an action.
qsl I'm looking more for the future with the next release so that these types problems can be minimized (still opining for an ISO that automatically runs updates as part of the install).
That would not help hardware support. If you can't boot the ISO because the kernel on the ISO does not support your hardware the fact that the installer can apply updates does not help you. It just stops you from needing to run sudo eopkg up -y after the initial reboot.
Harvey Hardware support is a different beast than having a boot rescue and updating from live USB just to install a driver for something already supported.
Some hardware isn't going to be supported for a variety of reasons. Understood.
But not forcing users to be baptized in the ways of chroot is something that can be fixed.
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I think we all understand that (a) we need to keep the ISO more current, and (b) keeping the ISO more current is not going to entirely resolve the issues with new hardware, including discrepancies between hardware support in the ISO kernel version and the kernel-current used in the installed/updated version. The ISO kernel will always lag behind the installed/updated version in ordinary course.
Something @WetGeek said about "Christmas computers" in an early comment has been rattling around in my head for a couple days. I wonder if whether we could time semi-annual ISO releases to hardware cycles? I don't know if this is still true, but in the past new hardware came in semi-annual release cycles, one in the Spring for July/August "back to school" computer builds and the other in late Summer for October/November "Christmas" computer builds.
If we could release a new ISO in, say, May/June and October/November each year, it might help reduce the "It runs on the installed version but not on the ISO ..." friction.
tomscharbach about "Christmas computers" in an early comment has been rattling around in my head for a couple days.
mine too, it was all the poor brand new rad Triple Mega Gaming Quake cpu/gpu owners that wetgeek imagined under their stockings, near the tree, angrily creating forum accounts 'cause their iso wouldn't install.
Couldn't shake that image either
.
/s
Ah, the romance of the seasonal ISO release, Christmas and Spring
--must be change of the weather. You know what would be cooler? Isos released on the solstices.
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brent You know what would be cooler? Isos released on the solstices.
June and December would work fine, and would align with Solus's Celtic origins. 
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Another thing that I think we should consider (in addition to the Solstice of course) is the kernel release cycle. An LTS kernel is usually released in the 4th quarter each year, and with minor releases coming every 2-3 months during the year. The most recent LTS kernel is 5.15, the next apparently will be 6.0, which seems to be coming along for release in the next few months.
Reading back through kernel information, it looks to me like the 4th quarter releases are usually "major" releases, with lots of hardware support updates, while the "minor" (maybe "meh") releases are not as focused on new hardware. I think that's where we got caught the last time around, building the ISO on the 5.13 "meh" release instead of waiting for 5.15, which was a "major" release.
With that pattern in mind, it might make sense to build the December (if that is what we do) ISO around the 6.0 kernel, because I understand that it has included major support upgrades for the most recent Intel/AMD hardware.
I'm also wondering whether all we need is an annual ISO, built on the most recent 4th quarter "major" release. I realize that saying this borders on heresy, given the thrust of comments in this thread (including my own), but if the hardware updates are clustered in the 4th quarter "major" releases, wouldn't that be often enough for ISO releases?
tomscharbach I don't know if this is still true, but in the past new hardware came in semi-annual release cycles, one in the Spring for July/August "back to school" computer builds and the other in late Summer for October/November "Christmas" computer builds.
This is still true, and there are other times as well. I got a new Dell XPS 17 in March for my day job since the old trusty ThinkPad was starting to lag with the software I use on a daily basis. I had researched the times price drops happen along with what hardware would fit my use case. This is a good article for laptops, for people interested in details.
Related, I giggled at the comments earlier in the thread about gamers being the only /most of the people wanting new hardware, given my recent purchase being for work. Since more people are working from home, more people are supplying their own hardware for their job. I game on a Windows machine (with dreams of a fully non-fiddly Linux gaming rig). One should never assume what works for them will be true for everyone, or even most. Data, or just don't state things as fact.
Anyway, seeing recent comments in the Solus subreddit from someone who couldn't get the current ISO to boot their new machine, I'm looking forward to the dev team getting ISO releases on a more regular schedule. I know the devs are well aware of the need and are doing regular work to make this happen. I help by testing whatever I can. Solus is an awesome, reliable distro and I'd like as many people as possible who want to use it to enjoy it too.
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Inconsistency mostly related to hardware incompatibility is a feature of Linux systems across the board which is why a lot of folks choose to use Windows. I’ve never seen this as a negative point however since the choices within the Linux world are vast and despite some initial frustration there is always something good that will run on your machine if you can dedicate the time to find it. Regarding Solus I have at least one test machine that is very picky regarding installation (Compaq Presario 434). Among the systems that won’t install on it are PCLinuxOS and Void. Out of interest I installed Solus KDE today and there were 609 package updates. Everything completed without any errors.