find ways to consolidate/streamline the image matrix

[bsherman]

The image build matrix is huge...

GPUs

• open(intel/amd)
• nvidia
• nvidia-open

Other hardware:

• normal (either stock or bazzite kernels)
• asus (asus or bazzite kernel and extra packages)
• surface (surface kernel and extra packages)

Desktop(laptop)/Handheld (bazzite specific)

• normal (non nvidia)
• deck images

[bsherman]

Two major places to address the matrix:

• Bluefin
  • bluefin-hwe (possibly consolidate asus/surface to this with fsync kernel)
  • Related: [Discussion] - Refactor Offered Images bluefin#1839
• Bazzite
  • ?

[m2Giles]

Bluefin has consolidated down. While there is an Asus/surface image, they are both the same image as hwe. It uses the Bazzite kernel. We also removed all hwe images from GTS and stable. Aurora does not build GTS. Including the beta images, we build 36 images. This is down from our high water mark of 64 images.

In the process, bluefin has removed dependency on the hwe caching layer. Bazzite has already done so as well.

I think the hwe caching layer should be deprecated along with the caching of the Asus/surface kernels. We have continuously struggled to get people to maintain those images and as of writing we still haven't actually updated surface to F41. Surface in particular was a struggle with the ISOs having firmware/kernel issues.

I think HWE repo reverts back to Nvidia and just publishes Nvidia images of main.