Exactly, here’s the problem. There should be more focus on equipment newer than 8 years old, because who buys 8 years old equipment, no one because sometimes some need to have not only qubes but also windows or freebsd for something and in work their need to have strong latest hardware. Well written because for systems such as Qubes we need more RAM, a better processor, so instead of Intel i3 from 9 years ago, most users will choose the new Ryzen 9, the latest Intel i7 - i9 or Threadripper and the latest RAM to be able to take full advantage of Qubes. That’s why I think the problem is to focus too much on old devices and too little on new devices.
Even if someone wants to play on the second system once a month, they cannot afford to buy too old devices, and you never know whether the new Qubes equipment will work without a problem or with a problem, which is why it is a lottery. Same as I have an old 9 year old laptop not from HCL (Getac G) but everything works fine except for a weak processor, low RAM, and no NVM support.
HCL support is one thing, and reliable answering to GitHub problems and updating HCL based on user reports and interest in problems is another, and as we see, there is a growing problem with it.
Therefore, it is best to focus just as noted on devices not older than a certain period of time. I suggest not older than 5 years.
Statistics don’t lie. More people prefer to buy newer equipment and if Qubes wants to attract new users, they have no choice.
If the system is for users, it is the only option, but if it is only for the creators of the system, that’s another matter.
As I wrote, this is not the only problem in Qubes, but also the ignorance of users’ needs, this is the first time I meet with users having to ask for a crap for a long time like the number of colors. In systems like Arch, Garuda, or BlackArch, things like this are done in weeks when many times the community asks for it. Community asking for more colors and there is a problem and another users must wrote their own script in bash to add more colors. And we talk only about small think, not change all components and change dom0 only adding colors xd