Linux Rumours - Longer lasting Hardware

[nankura]

Hey guy's

Apologies if this is in the wrong section, wasnt sure were to post it xD

I've been using linux a phew year's now, ive done arch, ive joined a phew communitys, done debian/ubuntu, and to be honest the most consistant rumour ive heard towards linux is "Linux makes your hardware last longer". Now, im very curious how true or false this really is vs any other operating system.

i understand linux uses less resources. but there are common hardware failures

like hard disks are still the most common devices to die without much explanation why

So im curious, has this rumour ever been explored, proven, or disproved

[coldcritter64]

...So im curious, has this rumour ever been explored, proven, or disproved

Probably has a few times

[deadflowr]

Try this, find the oldest hardware you can,

and try and put a new version of a linux system on it.

Then try it with a new Windows system.

See which one might actually run on it.

[sudodus]

I think there are two different meanings of 'Longer lasting Hardware'

1. The hardware can work longer before breaking (a statistical average, mean time between failure), technical life-time.

2. The hardware can be used longer before getting obsolete (inefficient, difficult or impossible to use because of new software or tasks), economic life-time

I think that people are thinking about the second alternative, that linux can keep aging hardware efficient, and make it last longer that way. But there is a limit also when using linux. See this link http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2130640

[Hylas de Niall]

Probably has a few times

Where's the 'like' button? LOL!

[HermanAB]

Consumer hardware seldom lasts longer than about 5 years - even if you don't use it at all, the capacitors still deteriorates.

[leclerc65]

I have friends that own BSOD PCs, even with freshly installed XP. They are all reincarnated as Lubuntu machines.

[mastablasta]

funny that... my wife got an old mashcine with 256MB ram (can be maxed 384MB) at and 1,2Ghz as a gift. windows xp came preloaded :-O needles to say windowsXP needs at least 1GB ram to run reasonably. anyway we struggled with the mashcine for quite some time. it took 10 minutes to boot, it was then crashing or just rebooting by itself. i decided to try ubutnu 10.04 on it. it ran well at first but then started to become slow. so Chrunchbang replaced it. and so far it runs like a charm. boots in abotu 30-45 seconds. can watch you tube videos (amybe full screen they get a bit jerky but meh...). it is also interesting to notice that not a single crash happened since i've installed linux to it. strange.

[3Miro]

Windows 7 was the first windows released that didn't require fairly high end machine to just run the OS. If you are using Windows, you have to upgrade your hardware just to keep up with the demands of the OS. Linux on the other hand runs on older hardware and hence upgrades are not needed nearly as often.

In addition, Linux has very good HDD caching policies and doesn't require defragging, which reduces the stress on mechanical hard drives. Also, older versions of Windows on older hardware required quite a bit of swap usage.

The statement about old hardware was somewhat true in the past, it may no longer be true in the future.

[sudodus]

Windows 7 was the first windows released that didn't require fairly high end machine to just run the OS. If you are using Windows, you have to upgrade your hardware just to keep up with the demands of the OS. Linux on the other hand runs on older hardware and hence upgrades are not needed nearly as often.

In addition, Linux has very good HDD caching policies and doesn't require defragging, which reduces the stress on mechanical hard drives. Also, older versions of Windows on older hardware required quite a bit of swap usage.

The statement about old hardware was somewhat true in the past, it may no longer be true in the future.

I agree with most of this But what statement about old hardware are you referring to?