Deprecate images not used by our products

[castrojo]

Now that F42 is out it's time to clean out the tech debt. Since none of the core products use the wide variety of images created here I propose removing them.

We should keep:

main-base <-- empty solid base
silverblue-main <-- used by bluefin and bazzite
kinoite-main <-- used by aurora and bazzite

Since no core developers use anything else it makes sense to deprecate them, especially given that bootc is in cncf sandbox and multiple orgs are now springing up so we don't need to do this. I think something like 90 days and/or break/fix, whichever comes first?

Additionally we should trim down the "build your own!" stuff on the website but we can do that later.

Only bluefin uses GTS so those can probably go asap.

[tulilirockz]

Would we still build -nvidia images? None of the ublue downstreams are actually using -nvidia stuffs, just using the nvidia-install.sh script.

[bsherman]

@tulilirockz

Would we still build -nvidia images? None of the ublue downstreams are actually using -nvidia stuffs, just using the nvidia-install.sh script.

We actually didn't discuss removing nvidia, though you make a valid point; it would be more consistent with our statement here if we do, since the nvidia images are also not used in our downstream final images.

The reason we don't use it in those final images is largely the fact that we do kernel swaps in them, while in main we only build the default kernel, and thus nvidia images with the default kernel.

@castrojo @m2Giles @KyleGospo @ublue-os/approver
should we remove nvidia builds?
If so, I definitely think we should add a deprecation notice, like we did for the other builds we plan to remove in September, not do so immediately.

[m2Giles]

I know the Nvidia images are something that people use. @travier even has them mentioned in his readme and has recommended them.

I agree that it would be on topic for the current messaging. But we already nuked nvidia-propietary.

[antheas]

I was also speaking with people in flock and a general theme was that you cannot use Nvidia on silver blue and kinoite, so I would keep them for this reason

[bsherman]

I know the Nvidia images are something that people use. @travier even has them mentioned in his readme and has recommended them.

I was also speaking with people in flock and a general theme was that you cannot use Nvidia on silver blue and kinoite, so I would keep them for this reason

These are good points to be aware of, but also, still directly in conflict with us trying to streamline the build processes to only things we consume ourselves... it keeps getting delayed for many reasons, but when we finally add ARM builds, we instantly double ALL of our builds so I've always wanted to keep the initial set of builds low for that reason... avoiding the extra builders and complexity.

I wonder if a suitable alternative is making the default example in the image-template repo literally build an nvidia image from main?

If someone really wants that, they can build it, it's a github clone and run away!

[antheas]

It is a value add for UB. Also, you don't need to do arm Nvidia so I'd say you only 50% increase

[m2Giles]

Let's say we keep Nvidia right now.

That's 6 images per release. So during beta that would be 18 images.

Adding ARM would be 36 images during the busy time. And 24 images most of the time.

[bsherman]

An aside, this is why one should never add anything to a project without careful consideration. :-) It's almost impossible to remove later! 😆