Hot take but I really don't know what people are doing on their systems to upgrade them every 2-3 years.

I've seen someone describing GPUs like RTX3060 as "old" and I'm like "perfectly good GPU that lets you play any game you want?!".

We've gotten to the point where almost any piece of hardware (except for Celerons or cheap ARM SoCs) made in past ~6 years is good for any use-case.
Call me crazy, but my main workstation literally has a:
- Laptop CPU from 2021 (Engineering Sample of i9-11980HK)
- 32GB of DDR4
- Radeon RX7800XT (that I almost never used due to lack of time etc)
- Optane 900P 280GB (that I received from Intel few years back, perfect for a work drive)
- Kingston KC3000 1TB NVME

I do heavy stuff like compiling Linux kernel on this system and it's perfectly reasonable. I can play any game I would ever want on this system. I feel literally zero need to upgrade.

Same goes for my main laptop which I received from community member back in ~December 2022 to mainline it. It's a Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (Google/Hatch/KOHAKU) with:
- i5-10210U
- 8GB DDR3L
- 1TB NVME
- 4K AMOLED screen (touch, pen)
- Weights ~1KG, charges with any USB-C charger
- Great backlight keyboard, WiFi 6 etc.

Once again, it's a 6 year-old laptop. Of course I'm not going to compile a Linux kernel on it, but nothing stops me from SSHing into my workstation at home (or even container at work if I need to build something like OpenBMC) and using it essentially as a terminal.

Smartphones? Same thing. I bought a Google Pixel 6 back in 2022, it still has a great camera, performance and whatnot. Why would I want to replace a perfectly working phone just because it's ~4 years old?

People really need to stop following trends and consider upgrading their hardware only when it stops serving their purposes.
You (usually) don't miss anything by having older hardware, just some "nice-to-haves" that don't make a difference in grand scheme of things.

@elly

Not a hot take (unless I am also a hot taker) - somewhere around the mid 2010s it seems, we didn't need to be upgrading every 2-3 yrs which is nice. I type this on a 13 yr old Alienware laptop. My gaming rig (i7-6700, gtx 1080) runs Arc Raiders "ok" enough). My phone is 8 yrs old (Android 8.1).

I've also hit that stage in my life where my frugalness has outpaced my dislike of e-waste and sending things to landfill, so if it still works, Ima keep using it.

@elly
Lukewarm take at best... I guess I still would've had my GTX1060 if it hadn't died on me. My RTX3060-sporting laptop will be with me as long as it lives.

@elly RTX 5090 is the minimum requirement for the average windows kernel anti cheat malware

@elly i’m still on a rx580 and it still plays most of what i wanna play. stuff not being available for linux due to EAC or other malware is a larger issue than processing power for me xD

@elly

> I bought a Google Pixel 6 back in 2022, it still has a great camera, performance and whatnot. Why would I want to replace a perfectly working phone just because it's ~4 years old?

I'm also on a Pixel 6 and it's been pretty good, but it's going to stop getting security updates in a few months so I think I'm about due for an upgrade... not to mention the battery life has degraded a lot over time...

But yeah I agree with you for 99% of use cases

@Voidburger keep an eye on gs101-mainline project

@elly That's a pretty cool project, I plan to keep using #GrapheneOS though. And like I said, there's other reasons I want a new phone anyway, the end of security updates is just one of the main ones and the EOL date is a convenient "deadline".

@elly I've had multiple people tell me that 8GB of ram is unusable in 2026, while my main laptop (acer chromebook spin something something) has 8GB of ram and I use it every day.

@elly

totally agree.

CPU: Intel i7-4790K (8) @ 4.500GHz
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 5500/5500M / Pro 5500M
Memory: 4309MiB / 31971MiB

@elly I do all my things on a HP laptop from 2012, performance-wise, sure many other computers will be better, but it's really not like I need all that power. It can do most things I throw at it just fine.

And when I'm on the go and don't want to carry around my laptop, I use an even less powerful Samsung tablet. It can be used to do some light web browsing, IRC, and ssh so I can even ssh to my laptop at home to run more intensive things (waypipe also works just in case)

It's not necessarily about trends, it's about programmed obsolescence, because e.g. windows 11 no longer supports your computer, but in the FOSS world, some developers also write extremely slow and inefficient software, to then blame it on the hardware when it runs very slow (see: Element, gtk+libadwaita, etc). many people say that it's really just software moving on,

but I really don't understand why I would need a faster computer for the same usecases which years ago that very same computer would handle just fine. My usecases haven't really changed much in years at this point, so I don't get why performance/power requirements for them should change. Also, in this age of RAM sticks costing about the same as a full house, well, we can basically forget buying a new computer :)

But many people just buy something new and move on, repeat ad-nominem. And then they throw their old perfectly working computer away. Don't think anyone needs a reminder that the wrong ice is literally melting right now as I am writing this.

@elly that PC is a banger system tbh but I get the point. especially with how much the pay differences are in Poland with regards to other parts of Europe

I have a Ryzen 5 3600 system with a 6750XT, 24GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD and it only really gets used for games because it devours power

on the Mac side it's a Mac Studio M1 I got a really good deal on and a MacBook Air M1 I bought new almost 6 years ago with ~76% of battery life left

Then I've got all the other assorted systems but they're all assembled from used parts pretty much. The M1 Air is probably the only time I've had a "cutting edge" computer and I don't really intend to change that :)

@elly I wouldn’t call any of that old, it’s newer than every computer I have.

My main laptop is a ThinkPad T440p (~13 years old, with i7-4700MQ, 16GB DDR3L, and a 500GB SATA SSD (Samsung 860 EVO that’s at least 6 years old although not in constant use during that time)), and I would compile Linux on it.

I do have some newer computers but they’re still all older than 2020:

• My school laptop (and also the one I took to FOSDEM): ThinkPad T480s (~8 years old, i5-8250U, 16GB DDR4, 240GB NVMe)
• What’s going to replace my current server (and I currently use to build absurdly huge stuff like OpenBMC): Supermicro X11SSH-LN4F (motherboard from 2017, CPU from 2019 (i3-9350KF), 32GB ECC DDR4, 2x 1TB NVMe SSDs in btrfs RAID-1 (WD Red SN700, the only new component))

Both of the working smartphones I have (PinePhone and OnePlus 8T) are from 2020. I don’t see why anyone would need a faster SoC than the Snapdragon 865 on a phone, it’s mainly restricted by the shitty operating system (Android). I think part of the reason people upgrade phones so often is a combination of phone manufacturers only providing a few years of updates and difficult-to-replace batteries.

(Also it must be LPDDR3 not DDR3L in your KOHAKU, that SoC doesn’t support DDR3L)

@tezoatlipoca @elly made me realize my phone is also 8yo now. I’m honestly not sure how newer ones are supposed to be better, and I don’t even like my phone (don’t buy xiaomi, gals. bad idea)

…my phone is literally older than my youngest brother…

@elly

I totally agree that we are way past the point where you NEED to upgrade for doing your things, and I totally agree it's not sustainable in the long run, but I kinda understand the reason why some people upgrade their hardware often. It's nice to have new things, bigger numbers and so on!

@elly I’m on a laptop from 2021 with a broken fan and I’m still able to do 90% of things I want to do. nobody can tell me it’s essential to get the latest tech, especially if it’s a big PC type build.

…I mean, I do want to replace that fan at some point so I can play minecraft again. Not that I checked whether I can, I just assume it’s too much for it to handle without a fan.

as for the future? if my laptop’s chinesium shell does finally crumble enough for me to stop wanting to use it, I kinda want something with HDR next. It’s getting harder and harder to find a laptop with reasonable specs though

@elly I’ll say though, I’m enjoying the peace and quiet

@elly
>except for Celerons or cheap ARM SoCs
hot take but even those can be / are fine imo, it all depends on the usecase

@elly vrchat eats through your system resources easily

@leandrofriedrich Oh, of course! If all you need is a text editor, some light web-browsing and XMPP/Matrix (no electron garbage, lightweight DE/WM) then RK3399 will serve you just fine

@technobaboo I usually get ~30fps (if that) in meetups, but I wouldn't fault my hardware for that. Sure, using a headset with 2160x2160 displays doesn't help but come on. My PC should be able to easily handle it and performance issues are just a bad optimization. People play this on CPUs from freaking phones after all.

@elly Considering the performance difference between a 3060, 4060 and 5060, I wouldn’t classify that as old in the same way I might compare a pre-zen or possibly zen 1 AMD cpu to a zen4+ and newer processor. Obviously workload makes a big difference in these cases though and I do frown on people judging on age/usability.

@fun @elly
>HP from 2012
Business-grade (probook, elitebook, ZBook) or consumer sludge?

I've considered getting an Elitebook 8560W because it's currently one of the cheaper second-hand laptops with an MXM GPU slot, mostly to help with replacement panels and to get 4K 60hz for my ridiculous 32 inch panel (christmas gift).

Decided to finish the botched 1440p mod of my T430 (blew the backlight fuse during testing) instead.

@fun @elly
Many smartphones would probably be alright laptop substitutes if they shipped with physical keyboards and mice (trackpoint, trackball, even trackpads): even with the absurdly wide aspect ratios and gross camera holes.

@elly Yeah I don't get it either, both in terms of price, the inconvenience of switching stuff around regularly, how pollution-wise we ought to keep our devices working for as long as possible, …

That said I wonder if the ones switching regularly are just more vocal or it's like business gear? (Where then it's often done with horrible contacts just following end-of-warranty as an end-of-life date even though that's not really how it should be used)

@elly 30-50 feral rust-analyzers: is there someone you forgot to ask? xD

Absolutely true that HW from even 10 years ago is perfectly fine for lots of use cases but when you compile a lot, perf boosts add up. I upgraded from a perfectly good 5850U laptop to an X1E-80-100 one and it's like 2x faster in multicore.. And the X2EE is already sounding like a very-nice-to-have with a whole extra GHz of boost and 6 more cores… unfortunately RAM crisis tho x_x

@tezoatlipoca @elly just sucks that I'm forced to run the Nvidia closed source drivers if I want to have any gaming performance on the 10xx cards. I have two laptops one with a 1050 mobile one with a 1060 and that prevents me from switching both to Chimera Linux 🤬

@moses_izumi @elly I use exactly that laptop, EliteBook 8560w with its default GPU, the Quadro 2000M. It handles 3440x1440@60Hz .... I'd say, yes, but barely (thanks nvidia...), and you can forget about 4k playback or much gpu-accelerated things due to the gpu being just bad.

But other than that it's pretty fine, with a better gpu it should still withstand .. I'd say, 5-10 years :)

@fun @elly
The cool thing about MXM is that it's just PCIe in a funny shape, so you could absolutely just use a low-profile bus-powered desktop GPU if you have more money than sense.
(breakout cable costs 200 USD 'cause it's a niche standard and demands signal integrity or something).

@weirdtreething I want this to Just Work, but modern software is kind of an L. my partner's Pixelbook Go on Fedora eats 6GB (of 8) basically just idling KDE Plasma. starts OOM killing after a handful of Firefox tabs

back in my day I went thru uni w 4GB and upgrading to 8GB was super comfy

@pomagarnet I used to use a chromebook with 4gb of ram. I ran kde plasma and I remember being able to open multiple firefox tabs at once with no ooms.

@elly but also when was the last time you used a windows device? They shove so much bloat into your gullet that you need small powerplant to run a laptop.

@elly I have a conspiracy theory. This is engineered into people. Let's call it obselecence through social engineering

@_r @elly @tezoatlipoca my phone is also from 2017 😭
The problem there isn't the age, but that I literally cannot buy anything newer without downgrading and I have to take care of software updates myself, since Siny stopped supporting it in 2019.

@weirdtreething same! I suspect it has to do w memory leaks after not rebooting for 30days but dunno 🤷‍♀️

@pomagarnet yeah i dont think you can have that much uptime and not expect issues.

@elly I code and play games rarely. The main factor for me is compilation time, everything else feels same. I use i3-6006(8gb ram) laptop interchangeably with ryzen 3500x desktop, however when it comes to compilation of huge projects, I do it on my desktop, but it is slow nonetheless. 22.5 min(IIRC) for arm-unknown-linux-gnueabi toolchain in crosstool-ng, it would take hours on my laptop. I do this not often luckily.

Bevy(Rust) game was compiling with release profile 1+ hours laptop.