I'll probably transition my AMD 8350 build over to Linux when Win10 stops being supported. As opposed to my mom's FX-8370 build, which I'll probably just have to replace with a new Windows 11 system, as there's no way I'm expecting her (an elderly woman) to learn anything other than Windows. Especially since she's reliant on Windows-only apps.
The actual hardware she's using will probably be converted to a Linux Desktop, but I'll have to migrate her data to a new mini Windows 11 PC or something.
I know someone (86 yeard old) that never had a computer before her mid-70s. I built her several Xubuntu machines over the years, and she manages getting online, social media, e-mail and solitaire games just fine.
She didn't need much teaching from me at all. And it goes without saying that support requests are very rare and I've never had to reinstall her system because of some malware ate her files.
Absolutely! I got a little Ryzen 5 box with 64GB RAM and 1.5TB of SSD for, like, $500 ($300 base 16GB+500GB, IIRC?). I've been used to XPS laptops as my daily drivers for several years, my most recent being less than 2 y/o. It is absolutely shocking to me how much better that little Ryzen is, for how little money.
I haven't checked power consumption on it, but at this point I'm seriously considering just packing one up with a small LCD, a BT keyboard/mouse, and a honking 20k amp battery when I travel, instead of taking the laptop.
It is absolutely shocking to me how much better that little Ryzen is, for how little money.
I just replaced my older i7 CPU with a newer AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D, and it's just absolutely RIDICULOUS how much faster this 3D V-cache (L3 cache) is when running Linux. It's just crazy, even when doing computational fluid dynamics (CFD, which is my field of work). Intel's Xeon Silver/Gold/Platinum series processors cost THOUSANDS of dollars, whereas this Ryzen processor is $320. TWICE as fast as Xeon Silver doing the same CFD work.
I ❤️ AMD. RISCV may win my heart, but we're still a way out from comparable performance.
It's the threads. The 5 has 12 CPU threads, which plays really nicely with concurrent applications. Go - and other languages which make threading easy and which take advantage of the architecture - really shines. I love it.
It's a CPU/GPU combo chip, and the GPU doesn't have separate memory. So some % is reserved for the GPU.
Beyond that, I hate swapping. I never, ever have to worry about running out of RAM. I can run multiple Electron apps at the same time. Originally, I thought I'd be running Gnome or KDE, both of which are memory hogs. I can even run Java apps if I like
It's freeing, really. And given that it was, like, $100 for two 32GB modules... why not?