Guys I truly don’t mean to spam the community but these are legit questions. Yesterday I posted about linux compatibility and computers and every single person gave me knowledge to use and you’re all awesome.
Now my question is, I will undoubtedly be purchasing an older machine, would an older but good running machine still be able to install the latest kernels or versions of distros or are you limited to older versions only, based on the era of your laptop or is it really about the hardware you have? I know ram, disk space, basic stuff like that matters with distros, but I know that will not be a problem. I guess I’m thinking beyond that like processors. are older processors or anything else hold certain machines from being compatible with the newest and greatest kernels? Thanks!
AFAIK if you buy any computer from within the last 20 years, there’s a good chance you can get a 6.X Kernel running on it. 32-bit support is fading out, though. If you buy a 64-bit computer, you’ll be able (with sufficient RAM and hard disk space) to install any modern distro on it.
I’d say that single core performance and amount of RAM you have are the biggest issues with running anything on old hardware. Apparently, in theory, you could run even modern kernel with just 4MB of RAM (or even less, good luck finding an 32bit system with less than 4MB). I don’t think you could fit any kind of graphical environment on top of that, but for an SSH terminal or something else lightweight it would be enough.
However a modern browser will easily consume couple gigabytes of RAM and even a ‘lightweight’ desktop environment like XFCE will consume couple hundred MB’s without much going on. So it depends heavily on what you consider to be ‘old’.
The computer at garage (which I’m writing this with) is Thinkstation S20 I got for free from the office years ago is from 2011. 12GB of RAM, 4 core Xeon CPU and aftermarket SSD on SATA-bus and this thing can easily do everything I need for it in this use case. Browsing the web on how to fix whatever I’m working with at the garage, listen music from spotify, occasional youtube-video, signal and things lke that. Granted this was on a higher end when it was new, but maybe it gives some perspective on things.
Then why have I had such a terrible experience with my newer Dell Xps 13 9310 experience? user error or proprietary b.s.? because I have been told that the new Dells are going the more propriety route.