(Or: That Time My Old Laptop Tried to Teach Me Humility)**
We’ve all heard the legend: “CachyOS runs great on old hardware!”
Some say it’s the spiritual successor to Windows 10 for those ancient machines that Microsoft refuses to let into the Windows 11 country club. And honestly, Linux has always been the cooler kid at the party anyway—no cover charge, better snacks.
So, armed with science, curiosity, and a questionable amount of free time, I built a couple of virtual machines on my i7 desktop. Each VM had:
- 20 GB hard drive
- 8 GB RAM
- 4 CPUs
- CachyOS installed twice: once with XFCE, once with KDE
Then I ran Neofetch, HTOP, and Sysbench—because if you don’t benchmark something at least three different ways, were you even benchmarking at all? I figured this setup would simulate a dignified, elderly computer—like a grandpa PC with a pocket watch and strong opinions about floppy disks.
I even made a video about it.
(Insert shameless plug) → https://youtu.be/Xvb9jva89t0
But Then… The Doubt Set In
Yesterday, I had a dangerous thought (the best blog posts start this way):
“How accurate was my simulation? Did the i7 secretly give those virtual machines a performance boost behind my back?”
Only one way to know.
So I dug out my actual old laptop—a 2013 Intel i3 relic that’s been living rent-free in my closet. It’s rocking:
- Intel i3
- 16 GB RAM (don’t ask when or why I upgraded it; past me had a plan)
- 1 TB SSD
- Intel integrated graphics
Perfect test subject. Vintage. Dust-infused. Probably remembers when YouTube didn’t have ads.
The Installation Saga
My first attempt was KDE.
My laptop’s response?
Hard no.
No explanation, no apology—just a digital middle finger. I switch to Gnome, and suddenly the installer behaved like it had somewhere to be. I’m a KDE Plasma user on my main system, so this was suspicious. But I pressed on.
Surely, Gnome wouldn’t perform that differently, right? Though I still expected good ol’ XFCE to be the lightest of the bunch.
The Results Are In… and They Are Rude
The virtual machines—running on handicapped settings—outperformed the physical laptop in nearly every benchmark.
Yes. You read that right.
My “simulated old computers” were apparently fitter, faster, and more stylish than the real old computer.
Somewhere, the laws of computing physics are laughing at me.
Conclusion: Hardware Matters (and Apparently So Does Karma)
My virtual machines were good for comparing XFCE vs. KDE under equal conditions, but they were not a faithful recreation of a 2013 laptop. At all. Not even close. The only place the physical computer won was in memory latency, which feels a bit like bragging that you can still touch your toes even though your back hurts all day.
o what did I learn?
- VM benchmarks ≠ real hardware reality
- Old laptops have personality, and sometimes that personality is “No, I won’t run KDE for you”
- My i3 system might need therapy after losing to a virtual machine
But hey, it was still useful. And I got a blog post out of it.