----- Original Message -----
<snip>
> Both machines are capable of running GNOME, playing videos, and
> launching
> multiple applications at the same time. The only things that make a
> difference
> are the amount of RAM in the machine, so we can open multiple
> applications
> without swapping, and whether the storage device is a spinning hard
> disk, or
> a faster Flash drive.
I use Fedora Workstation on an EndlessPC. It's not a particularly
powerful machine, but it's sold with an GS-based system, and I wouldn't
call it a smooth experience even without any apps opened.
The problem on those machines is probably something else. There's
performance problems with every BayTrail and CherryTrail devices out
there when using gnome-shell. The perceived performance is worse than
on those 10 year-old machines I was telling you about which tells you
that something else is wrong. The GPU is at least 10x faster than
it was 10 years ago and yet, it struggles.
The problem could be memory bandwidth. I know that Carlos Garnacho's
mutter patches in 3.24 already sped things up greatly.
My mom's T400 is at the edge.
With a conventional hard drive? A 40€/40$ SSD, and some 2nd-hand RAM
would probably make a world of difference.
> Being able to disable animations could still be an
accessibility
> setting,
> but it will have no impact on people's ability to run GNOME and
> applications
> on older machines.
That's correct, I must admit after some testing. Maybe people just
confuse it with the low-graphics mode (or whatever they call it) from
Ubuntu/Unity which is tuned to work on less powerful computers and
where the effects are disabled and think that disabling effects in GS
would have the same impact on performance.
This is the problem with providing whatever medicine is requested when
the patient self-diagnoses :)