Minimum hardware for different daily uses limits the use of old hardware

[Petermint]

[Title updated to reflect discussion]

My main daily activity is tap tap tap on a great keyboard, well as good as you can get in a notebook. I could do that on a Raspberry Pi 4. Anything that runs LibreOffice. But often I edit photographs which means more than 6 GB of RAM (my old notebook) and 16 GB appears to be the minimum today. I also run stuff that needs at least USB 3 and often use the USB 3.1 Gen 2 port because Gen 1 is just too slow.

I had an old netbook that was always too slow and equivalent today to a Pi 3B. Gone.

I have a Pi 3B with the fastest microSD card but it is too slow so I use a Pi 4. I have not found a use for the 3B.

My notebook upgrade about ten years ago was fast enough for reading stuff and the SSD let me browse my photographs of native plants. There was only one USB 3 port. Now that my photographs fill 2 TB, the old machine is relegated to a test machine.

I have a fast 2010 era desktop with upgrades slowly becoming the network file server because the ancient fast is no longer fast enough for photo processing.

I think USB 3 and keyboard response are the limiting factors for me when recycling old hardware. External copies on anything slower is painful and the old eSATA has disappeared. If keyboard response is not instant, it is a waste of my time. With all those photographs, an edit has to be instant, not an animated cursor display.

What limits your reuse of old hardware?

[Termy]

You can fit USB 3 hubs to the system, as PCI or PCI-E cards. I admittedly can't recall any PCI USB 3 hubs, but I've seen PCI-E ones.

For me, a limiting factor is already having a fairly modern machine — fairly. It was decent when I built it. I think it's still pretty damn good, but hardware has rocketed ahead since then. However, if I didn't have this machine or any of its core components, and I were OK making use of old hardware, the following things come to mind:

• The board might not support enough maximum RAM
• The board may not support a suitable graphics card
• The board may not have enough S-ATA ports
• The board's S-ATA ports may be too slow
• The board may not support 64-bit
• The machine may wind up having poor power management
• The machine may be comparatively noisy
• The machine may have poor cooling
• There might not be enough USB ports
• The machine might not support USB 3
• The machine might not work well in Linux

That's what comes to mind, off-hand. Some of that stuff can be addressed, such as myself improving the cooling situation, fitting a USB 3 card, using external hubs, replacing the PSU with a better one, and replacing noisy parts with quieter ones. I don't game on PCs now, and haven't done for a few years (prefer console), so I don't need something crazy, but I do sometimes need the juice, like for virtual machines.

Older machines lack modern power management features, so they can use more power. A simple example is IDE VS S-ATA, where IDE was not only a huge pain in the arse to manage, but also comparatively power-hungry. Older machines tend to be a bit on the noisy side, I've noticed, but not always. It really just depends how old the hardware is, as to how relevant or impactful the above list is. Older machines can be problematic in Linux due to the kernel dropping support for certain things, as the years go by. I often come across people having problems with Linux on very old machines, forcing them to stick to old kernel versions.

[Petermint]

Expansion boards are not always viable. I had one machine with every slot already filled when I looked at an upgrade. About the only hardware I could reuse was the mains power cord.

Another machine was a smaller form factor for use as a file server. There was only one expansion slot. All the disks could now fit on one physical disk. it was easier to fit one big disk to one of the other machines. Halved the power usage. Power usage is significant for old hardware running all day every day.

One old machine had a power supply with not enough wires for a motherboard upgrade. It needed that extra four wire plug. A Pi 4 is just as fast as that machine and modern USB 3 disks are the same size as all the disks in that machine. Not worth the upgrade. Gone.

3 out of 4 desktops replaced with Pi computers or merged into the one modern faster desktop. In ten years. Anything older than a decade can work if your requirements stay the same but it is hard to justify spending money on upgrades compared to a new machine.

[Hoser Rob]

... What limits your reuse of old hardware?

Driver support, mainly.

[RollyShed]

What is "for different daily uses"?
For the 50+ users of old hardware that I know there have been no limits caused by old hardware.
For this to be of any use, "daily uses" needs to be specified.

[rickNS]

Certainly 16 GB is not the minimum today, at least not for the vast majority of users.
Right now I have 2 firefox windows 20+ tabs between them, File manager, terminal, GIMP with two Images, and of course, system monitor, that's 3.8GB, so I can quite easily start another Virtual Machine, with only 8GB. Do not understand why OP needs 6GB to edit a picture ?

[Petermint]

Do not understand why OP needs 6GB to edit a picture ?

Editing a full size picture from a modern camera or scan, not a squashed JPEG. Some edit operations use many times more memory than the image size.

I did edits from a previous camera in 4 GB without having to shut down other applications. Camera upgrade. 4 GB only worked if I stopped doing other stuff needed during the workflow. The 6 GB upgrade using a dirt cheap memory card from a hardware recycler extended the life of that machine for another year.

6 GB limited the number of images I could browse while editing. 16 GB removed that limitation.

[Petermint]

What is "for different daily uses"?

Do you use your machine for email or editing video? Currently I edit only a small amount of short video. I know people with better video equipment who need 32 GB and a decent GPU just for their wildlife videos.

Develop software? I have developed in 1.6 GB. My Raspberry Pi 4 is just 2 GB because that is all I need. I tested one recommended setup with a fancy IDE and it loaded a GB of whatever before opening the edit screen.

What do people run that forces them to replace working computers with new hardware?

[rickNS]

Editing a full size picture from a modern camera or scan, not a squashed JPEG. Some edit operations use many times more memory than the image size.

Again, like the "pretendent" in need of windows, you also lack ANY evidence in that statement as well. "SHOW ME THE IMAGE !" so I can duplicate your problem.
Your mem. problem may very well be Linux Mint Cinnamon itself as result of it's memory leaks.

[all41]

Adventures into minimilistic hw and dsl are entertaining to begin with--but boring right away

[Petermint]

problem may very well be Linux Mint Cinnamon itself as result of it's memory leaks

I sometimes run LM C. for days starting and stopping heaps of applications without a reboot and never see an increase in memory usage LM. There are plenty of applications with significant memory leaks, the main reason I close some applications when not in use.

The file cache also fills up for some activities but not daily activities. My main external disks can overflow 16 GB when I run a file name search. LM and all the daily non image applications have 2.5 GB or less. The file cache easily passes 12 GB then there is paging plus cache reloading. I can search a 1 or 2 TB disk without overflow. Somewhere around 3 TB, the cache fills and the search slows down. If I did that every day, I would buy more memory.

[rickNS]

Adventures into minimilistic hw and dsl are entertaining to begin with--but boring right away

Boring... at least.