cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/nonpolitical_comics/p/1654790/alexkrokus-elders
Linux? That revived a laptop nearly 16 years old.
this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2026
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I wonder how many people don't realize thermal throttling is likely contributor to their old laptop slowing down.
The occasionally blast of compressed air and replacing the 6 year old dried out thermal paste does wonders.
I've always felt sus about using canisters instead of compressor/fan. They use gas which instantly freezes the surface, which introduces some serious material stress in the long term. Also, with cold surfaces but warm air comes condensation
They only freeze the surface if you hold the can upside down or sideways though. If you hold it upright it just sprays close to room temp CO2 as it is suppose to.
Some parts of my pc are over 20 now.
I stopped using my old cases when we went from AT to ATX
Though I still have a 286 that still works, my expectation for the first thing to go on it is the mouse
My 10yo laptop is faster than my wife's new one.
I mean hers is a lot more powerful obviously, but fuck if I know what Windows does with that power, cause it sure isn't using it for the stuff she wants to do.
Haven’t the foggiest. It’s not fair, because it’s a work computer, but at work, have to run windows. It has 16gb of ram, which windows and stupid spying programs or whatever use more than half. Like 9gb, possibly more.
Insane! At home, I have Linux and my 16 gb there feels totally different. At work? Stifling! Needs 32! At home, tons of overhead, I could get more but why, the only time I even come close to needing more, I’m already up to weird things, so it’s understandable.
At a repair cafe, just saw someone with a chunky Dell Inspiron laptop that had a built-in modem and phone jack (!), which dates it to late 2000s (I believe), and I was impressed how fast Windows 10 was on it compared to newer cheap laptops.
They put react in the start menu
Between Windows 11 and Chrome. I had 8gb RAM on my wife's PC and with my wife jist running those two had 3gb left. Chrome was using 3Gb alone and there were 4 tabs open. My brain hurt trying to figure that out. I went through disabling all manner of startup processes and services. Helped a little, but not with Chrome. I finally just upgraded to 16gb. She doesn't like full reinstalls (use the damn share folder on the server and don't worry about lost files. Yes, it is mapped, it has your name and is only 1 of the three drives listed. At least backup the important ones so I won't have to pray Recuva works)
Real
Sometimes, old machines are survivors. Beware of confirmation bias when trash/thrift-picking cheap systems though. IMO, Thinkpads can be tough as a coffin nail. Including work systems, I'm on number 8 at this point with no hardware failures in sight.
That said, I have a very lightweight Acer that's about a decade old with the worst keyboard and trackpad ever manufactured. It also performs like a slug, even with Linux on it. Still, it refuses to break so I can get rid of it.
Elitebooks also hold up, I Frankenstein’d one together from old broken work laptops 10+ years ago for my brother, I had to replace the wifi chip and HDD that finally died in it the other week and threw Mint onto it with an SSD and that thing still handles like a dream. Boots in less than 10 seconds.
Oooh, rocking an HP? I too like to live dangerously.
But seriously, that's good to know. Those are probably easier to come by out in the wild. It really looks like Thinkpads go from office deployments straight to refurb companies these days. I never see them at thrift stores, and I'm not brave enough to dumpster-dive at e-waste.
*20 years old laptop. The ten years old is as old as this meme. Computer tech progress slowed down in the last 10 years.
Me: What do you mean my server is old? I built it last year!
Server Uptime: 988 days(!)
Oh...
I don't know why this comic makes me so sad. Every time I see it it feels more and more sad.
It shouldn't. I bet the computer feels good being useful.
Nah, our little tech buddies love being dragged from purgatory and made useful again. Revive and use your old hardware!
It looks pretty content in the last panel. Struggling but content. Whoops there goes another disk sector.
I installed VoidLinux on a 17 year old laptop with 2GB of DDR2
Is that like teaching grandpa factorio?
23 year old thinkpad with 2GB DDR here. I went for antix. My greatest pleasure was putting in an m.2 ssd in an ide adapter.
It took me months to find ram that actually worked.
My 10yo laptop is still going pretty strong...
I just replaced the HDD with an SSD and installed Pop!_OS on my partner’s 12-13 year old Levovo with a backup boot to Windows 10 LTSC IoT and it’s still running like a champion! It could use another 8GB RAM but both video cards in it are recognized by both Linux and Windows!
Ipod (classic) Gen 4
My refurbished 2011 Lenovo W530 Thinkpad with 24GB from college has been running as a proxmox cluster node for the last year at least! No battery, the replacement died years ago. 🤣
My old laptop became my router. Now it never gets to sleep. Getting my moneys worth until I need faster than GE.
I have a refurbished laptop, no clue how old it is, but its battery has long since died. It runs Xubuntu, it's fully up-to-date, and it's still a fine lunchtime battlestation. It's not gonna win any awards and it doesn't have the latest gaytracing graphics chip, but all I do is browse the fed, what more do I need?
bolani
Man, I just remembered my little old music player, maybe I could find it again.
It does feel like that yeah. But honestly it would probably still be pretty fast if the GPU driver support didn't cease. Being on the integrated GPU has made the thing age another 10 years, that piece of shit was already horrendously slow when the Laptop was new
I swear the old laptop looks older than the last time I saw this meme. He looks older right?