[Linux-aus] cheap laptops

[Russell Coker]

On Wednesday, 28 June 2023 09:43:29 AEST NeilBrown via linux-aus wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2023, russell at coker.com.au wrote:
> > Even on this mailing list most people don't compile their own kernels,
> > desktop environment, LibreOffice, etc.  The only strange thing about this
> > discussion is the number of people with unusual use cases that seem to
> > think that my comment about "most people" applies to them.
> 
> I think my response to your post was in part because your comment seemed
> rather presumptuous.  I genuinely don't know what "most" people need,
> and I doubt you or anyone else really does.  Is certainly don't think
> that "what many businesses impose on their employees" is a good metric
> for "what those employees need".

I don't think I'm at all presumptuous in thinking that I have a good rough 
idea of what most people need.  I'm involved in a lot of discussions among 
Linux users and even in the more technical places like r/homelab it's rare to 
see people compiling their own kernel.

I agree that many businesses impose silly things on their employees, but 
working in a corporate IT department I see the reasons why some things that 
seem silly aren't and also why some things users ask for aren't good 
solutions.  EG users ask for fast laptops to compile when low end laptops and 
build servers would be better.  High end laptops (in the "reliable 
workstation" category) have 16 cores and 64G of RAM while low end servers have 
32 cores and 256G of RAM.

> I'm very happy to hear about your experiences of how current technology
> meets your needs, possibly in new and different ways to earlier
> technology.  The stuff you mentioned a while ago about convergence was
> certainly interesting.  After you can reasonably be expected to be well
> informed about your own needs and experiences.

The current phone technology doesn't yet meet my needs for convergence.  It's 
disappointing that phones with 2012 laptop levels of CPU performance and RAM 
don't have 2012 laptop levels of video output.  But things keep improving.

> But sweeping generalisation about "most people" tend to annoy me.  They
> are rarely based on fact (though maybe that is a sweeping generalisation
> on my part ...  maybe I should say that generalisations about "most
> people" are, in my experience, rarely accompanied by references to data
> sources).

You can get a rough idea of what people want to pay for by what companies are 
selling.  Making laptops with 32G of RAM now is easier as a technology issue 
than laptops with 8G of RAM were 10 years ago, but most laptops don't have 
more than 16G so it seems clear that most people don't perceive a need for 
such RAM that makes them pay for it.  I'm personally mystified as to why 
someone would want a Windows system with 4G of RAM, but the fact that they are 
sold and presumably don't have lots of returns suggests that people are happy 
with it.

There used to be some jokes of the form "Amigas are used for games, Windows 
computers are used for wordprocessing, and Linux computers are used for 
compiling kernels".  But that was more than 20 years ago.  If we exclude the 
majority of Linux systems that are Android phones and routers then the 
majority of the remainder might soon be systems used mostly for web browsing 
and thin client computing.

I wonder if the downturn in LUGs in recent years is partly due to most people 
having systems that just work and not having to do things like compile 
kernels.  LUV is a fraction of the size it was 20 years ago, CLUG was inactive 
last I heard, and the SLUG web site seems to indicate that it hasn't had 
meetings since 2020.

-- 
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