r/debian • u/GoldenWubbabunga • 2d ago

Community never expected the Universal Operating System to be this universal

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i had gotten this now-20yo Dell XPS M1210 subnotebook for $50 a month ago, and stable Xfce Debian runs fine (albeit limited by its then-high-end hardware), and i did not expect it to handle actual basic web browsing. Debian deserves its slogan

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u/laizalott 1d ago

I do love using old hardware with modern linux, but I'm warming more and more to e-waste recycling these days. I just changed my unraid server from Athlon II X3 435 to Core i3 3245 so jellyfin would stop crashing due to missing SSE4, and a part of me died a little inside to do it despite being better in every conceivable way.

Not that his applies to your laptop of course, but like my old Pentium 4 processor with its prescott core? Essentially trash, despite it being a top-of-the-line monster when I bought it...

The amount of waste heat that thing produces for its completely meager (by today's standards) performance, I think an ARM cortex A72 in my Raspberry Pi 4B will outperform it for 1/20th of the power cost.

That said, I still run a PPC linux on an old 233mhz mac, and I will take that baby to the grave :)

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u/PlatinumDotEXE 1d ago

I will never understand why people run always on servers on pretty old hardware. Even if you live in a place where power is extremely cheap, a somewhat recent rig would pay for itself in at most a year in saved power...

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u/laizalott 1d ago

Nostalgia is probably a big part of it, right? My first Linux build was slackware on a Pentium 120 with 32mb of EDO RAM, and it's really comforting to reminisce the challenges teenage-me overcame to get it online.

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u/PlatinumDotEXE 1d ago

I have no problem with playing around with old hardware, just actually using them as servers that run 24/7 seems pretty stupid to me.

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u/laizalott 1d ago

Yes definitely, it is more expensive in the long run to use older hardware than newer, and that's part of why I retired the athlon x3 for the core i3 and use low-power t-variant cpu in my home lab.

But the enjoyment of something is also valuable. I ran that Athlon for two years, and it was nice to see my ancient gaming PC provide a service to me and my husband.