I don't mind that we disagree on this. You make it seem like I have some vested interest in having you run XP or whatever on your R52. I can assure you that it's not the case. 😀
I focused on boot time, because of the phrasing you choose repeatedly (i.e. on the one that comes with Xubuntu, it takes aprox 30 seconds from pushing the power button to being on Vogons). This leads me to think that you are measuring from cold boot. Also, the times you chose to present - Chrome on XP takes aprox 5 minutes to be able to go on Vogons - simply don't make sense, unless you include boot time in them. Refer to my earlier statement about a P2 running Vista.
People refer to boot time as an important metric for measuring OS quality, and my opinion, is that it's simply not as important as people make it. So I choose to point it out when it seems relevant.
I understood that you were not talking just about that. But your story just has too many unknowns to serve as a good comparative study. You say that you "found an R52 in your closet that's been running XP". Who installed it? When? How? Did you reinstall it from scratch before doing these measurements? Did you use a clean install, or IBM's recovery disks? Which drivers did you install? Etc. Perhaps you can address all these unknowns, but why bother? You are happy running Linux on that machine, and your advice to run Linux on that machine is good and solid.
It may seem that I am arguing here for the sake of arguing. It's not that. As I said, I too have systems of comparable age (and even older), running Windows XP. On none of them the situation is as bad as you described. Yes, I've seen some systems bogged down to being completely useless - usually they were ridden with viruses, malware, some broken crap beyond salvation. All of my systems are well-maintained, and they are quite usable, even with a fully updated XP SP3.
So once again, here are my points:
- I fully support running Linux on a P-4 or P-M laptop, or any laptop, if it meets the user's demands.
- In most cases, a lightweight Linux installation will be faster and more lightweight than a Windows XP installation.
- The claim that a lightweight Linux will be, in general, 4-5 times faster than Windows XP on P-4/P-M hardware is untrue.
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