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Aurornislast Sunday at 2:06 PM3 repliesview on HN

> Because number bigger doesn’t translate to higher perceived performance…

When the numbers are that far apart, there is definitely room to perceive a performance improvement.

2011 era hardware is dramatically slower than what’s available in 2025. I go back and use a machine that is less than 10 years old occasionally and it’s surprising how much less responsive it feels, even with a modern high speed SSD drive installed.

Some people just aren’t sensitive to slow systems. Honestly a great place to be because it’s much cheaper that way. However, there is definitely a speed difference between a 2011 system and a 2025 system.


Replies

hedoralast Sunday at 2:55 PM

Choice of things like desktop environments matters a lot. I’m using xfce or lxde or something (I can’t tell without checking top), and responsiveness for most stuff is identical between 2010 intel and a ryzen 9.

The big exceptions are things like “apt get upgrade”, but both boxes bottleneck on starlink for that. Modern games and compilation are the other obvious things.

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estimator7292last Sunday at 2:47 PM

Believe it or not, "good enough" often is good enough. Regardless of how big the numbers are.

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cassepipelast Sunday at 4:54 PM

Especially on single core, everything is painfully slow. Tried to install linux on a ppc imac G5 five years ago and I had to admit that it was never going to be a good experience, even for basic usage