On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 2:31 PM Andrew David Wong <a...@qubes-os.org> wrote:
> On 11/23/20 10:06 AM, Steve Coleman wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 9:33 AM Andrew David Wong <a...@qubes-os.org> > wrote: > > > I have a question about the HCL process and page display that I have been > > wondering about. > > > > I was for the longest time copying and pasting the HCL web page into a > > spreadsheet just so I could sort and delete out all the old information, > as > > I was looking to replace my desktop system with something more up to > date. > > I can't tell you how many times in the last three years I copied the HCL > to > > this spreadsheet, and when my old desktop finally died I had to give up > > hope and just bought a new system sight unseen that was not on the list > and > > I just hoped for the best. Fortunately, it worked out Ok. > > > > As it is right now it is difficult and getting increasingly harder to > find > > just the latest hardware on the list as it seems that by the time > something > > appears on the list it is no longer even available for purchase. > > 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. Agreed. But it is certainly possible to make this more of a discussion on how to give back to the community. The Qubes patriotic thing to do is to submit your successes so others can follow without so much fear and hesitation. We can't force anyone > to submit reports, and we usually can't get new hardware to generate > reports on ourselves. No, but a well-placed note/request at the end of the Qubes install process could go a long way to actually encourage them to submit the report to help others. The "how you can help" could also suggest this as a way to give back which is easy even for novices who were just introduced to Qubes. Make it a badge of honor. In fact, one could encourage people with questions to include a report link/ID where the fundamentals of their basic machine configuration would be available online for the experts to better understand the problem. Not everyone would necessarily want to give their anonymity away, but for some questions, this link could provide some valuable information about the hardware that would be easy to share. > 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. > Very true, unfortunately. I submitted my "Dell XPS 8930" but it has not shown up yet. With 8 cores and 64GB of memory, it is already out of production but it is still available through other retailers. Somebody who is looking for a new beefy desktop may not see this on the HCL until it is no longer available anywhere. That is the same boat I was in when my desktop up and died and I had no choice but to draw straws and pick one almost at random. Yes, there were other *very old* XPS's on the HCL and some did *not* work properly, but based on the hardware in this one I figured it might just work. Unfortunately, this only has a "firmware TPM" that is disabled in BIOS when using the legacy boot settings and there is no header on the motherboard to even add a physical TPM. I may just dabble with the idea of a qubes auditable software-based vTPM (qTPM) and see if I can find a way to make something work for the contributor's packages. Not sure about that yet, but it's an idea that might even allow for locking down the boot partition by making it read-only until after a successful boot/login. Evil maids can't change what they can't edit. > 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 > Good news: I am a retired professional computer scientist and willing to help. Bad news: I retired for medical reasons and am now spending most of my time starting up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit to research an incurable disease that doesn't even have a test for it yet. I'll be happy to do what I am able, but at the moment I have no clue how the current HCL infrastructure works. If someone can kindly help me get oriented as to what currently happens maybe I can help come up with a better way of doing it. I feel strongly that this is important enough that it needs doing to advance the cause of Qubes with more potential users. > 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. > I would not want to just throw that information away, but rather have the user actively adjust the settings to be able to review the older historical entries if desired. I did see that the HCL repository has the original yml files, so I would think that creating a database or index of them to allow better filter options would be a good first step. But I guess I'll have to read the part about the current broken sorting algorithm to figure out what is happening before suggesting too much about what to do. 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). > I'm willing to take a look, but can't promise how much time I can actually devote. My medical situation currently dictates everything at the moment. thanks for the quick reply, Steve -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "qubes-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to qubes-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/qubes-users/CAJ5FDngZVhXiEEJR1u9aoW4LgSYAGMbJZsfVSxG9OU0gdMJs9Q%40mail.gmail.com.
