Best not to say "Try it in Linux" on Slashdot, you're a lot more likely to run in to someone who already has. My laptop and server are exclusively Linux and my desktop dual-boots. Ubuntu LTS all around, 14.04.1 on the desktop/laptop and I haven't gotten around to upgrading the server from 12.04.5 yet. AMD even lost performance per clock compared to themselves with their recent chips.

My home server previously ran a Phenom II X4 945, a 3 GHz quad core released in mid-late '09. That motherboard blew up after a power event so I switched to an A10-7850K, a 3.7-4.0 (turbo) GHz quad core released in January of this year. It's both faster clocked and a full four years newer, plus I threw double the RAM at it since I had to get new sticks anyways for DDR3 vs the old DDR2, yet somehow it's slower in the real world. My usenet downloads parcheck/extract slower, my Minecraft server bogs down more often, and it can't even manage to proxy Steam traffic at the full 100mbit/sec my internet connection allows.

As for Phoronix, how's this one? The very processor I'm running, the top model of the latest core AMD has released.

It barely holds with the Core i3s on average.

I have historically defaulted to AMD. My last Intel outside of laptops was a 300 MHz Pentium II. I regret going with AMD for the server and unless they pull something huge out of their ass in the near future I'll be changing my desktop over as soon as the prices drop on the now last-gen Intels.

Since slashdot stupidly still doesn't allow edits, here's the mandatory car analogy:

SSDs are like snow tires in Colorado. Sure you can get along without them but you're losing a lot by doing so.

Because SSDs are literally the best thing you can do for your computer's performance in desktop applications. Most of the time you're nowhere close to CPU limits and these days standard RAM levels are finally high enough that only the cheapest shitboxes hit swap in normal browsing/chatting/office type tasks. Everything is waiting on the slow old hard drive. Make that an order of magnitude faster and it shouldn't be a surprise that you can rejuvenate even an old computer.

My work laptop is a Dell Vostro from 2010 with a sub-2GHz Core 2 Duo processor. It runs circles around most of my customers' computers in day-to-day stuff even when they have Core i-series processors solely because it has enough RAM (8GB) and more importantly a SSD. It's not even a great SSD, just a cheap Kingston, but it makes a huge difference.

The correct answer for any new computer is a reasonable sized SSD for the OS and applications combined with a regular hard disk for larger stuff like media collections where random access time isn't as important. Only gamers really need to compromise, with so many games these days exceeding 10GB it's still too expensive for a lot of us to have our entire game collections on SSD, but in that case it's still not hard to just install whatever you play most to the SSD and put older/less commonly played titles on the HD.

*whoosh*

I was just making a dumb joke. Chuckle (or not) and move along.

Uh......have you not noticed that AT has a full sponsored AMD section? They literally give AMD news special placement. The fact is, and I say this as someone whose only Intel processor is in his laptop, AMD performance sucks.

They're competitive usually on price to performance, but even the absolute top end 200+ watt 5GHz turbo AMD processor gets matched by mid-range i5s and stomped by i7s.

If you wait long enough the mortality rate goes to 100%.

In the US our consumer-grade vacuum cleaners are already effectively capped around the same wattage. The standard household electrical outlet is rated to provide 15 amps and does so somewhere between 100 and 125 volts. That's 1500-1875 watts as the maximum any single device clet an expect to pull without requiring a special outlet. Nothing in reality expects the higher end of the spectrum because it's by no means guaranteed.

Somehow we get along just fine, residential or commercial, with pretty much the same as what this limit allows. /me awaits some Brit who's come to explain how their 240v 13A outlets allow them to suck the carpet right off the floor with their cleaners.

Wow still? Good to see Verizon is still being the same fucksticks they've always been. Exactly why I tell people to never use them.

Just use a Nexus 5 and an iPhone. Both clean representations of their respective platforms without carrier bullshit, so it's a fair comparison of the networks themselves and nothing more.

Well 44.0.0.0/8 is entirely allocated for amateur radio use, so it's a slightly different situation. It was allocated back when IPs were given away willy-nilly and is so randomly utilized that condensing the space and recovering any of it would be an interesting proposition.

Packet radio is so niche that that particular subnet will probably never even get close to full, so there's no harm in you still having your chunk.

One of my biggest gripes with most modern terminals, the scrollback buffer is uselessly small in the default configuration. Mac OS X is the only system where I don't feel the need to modify it literally the first time I do "cat /var/log/something"

Memory is not an issue for a graphical terminal on a desktop. There's no good reason for terminals to be defaulting to 200 lines anymore.

Android itself has not seen an update since then. The Nexus 5 initially shipped with 4.4.0 and got both 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 as soon as they were publicly announced. When Android 4.4.3 comes out (apparently soon) you're basically guaranteed to be the first device for which it's available.

Compare this to all the other phone vendors, who at least in the case of the large ones you know have had access to 4.4.3 for some time, where most devices still aren't on 4.4.2. Where devices are still being *launched* brand new and out of date the moment they're available.

I'm pretty sure there's not a single phone that still works since AMPS was turned off which doesn't have texting. It's a basic part of the GSM standard and I assume fairly basic in the CDMA world as well.

Or you can not install any social networking apps on it and use it as the magical information oracle like a lot of us do. Neither Android nor iOS comes with social networking installed by default. Yes, Google has Google+ but the app is not there in a base Android install, you have to get it yourself from the Google app store. It's been a while since I used an iOS device but to my knowledge the closest to "social" they have by default is the Game Center system.

If you're really paranoid you can install CyanogenMod, Replicant, Ubuntu Touch, or any number of alternative OSes and/or Android forks which you can build yourself from source and know exactly what's in it.

Disliking social networks makes sense. Avoiding smartphones because of that doesn't make any sense. No one is forcing you to use social networks just to have a smartphone.

Why? Easy. Because it's the only way to get the message across to corporate fucktards that we are in the internet era and updating your software is FUCKING MANDATORY. If you're going to be sharing the same global network as the rest of us, you need to understand that stagnation hasn't been an option for over a decade and the old habits formed on XP must be thrown out the window.

They've tried asking nicely for years, people still don't listen, now it's time to hold their feet to the fire. Outdated shit doesn't fly.

Ah, but you do have the control you speak of, just in a different way.

In my experience if you press the button without triggering the appropriate safety interlock (brake or clutch) the car goes in to "on" mode without starting the engine. I can say for sure this works on Kias and Fords, no idea on others.

I would be tempted to assume that push starting works the same way, but I can not confirm as the only manual push button start vehicle I've driven was a test drive in a Focus ST with the salesman in the back seat.

Cranking longer just seems to happen as necessary. My housemate's Optima will pull a 5-7 second crank on a cold morning with just a press of the button.