agressivelyPassive

Realistically, most companies replace their PCs every few years. So there are probably relatively few machines running in offices that don't meet the requirements.

Well, it hit 4% on desktop for the first time this year.

Then don't hesitate! You could easily install both side by side, in case you need some Windows exclusive software.

I already tried that using virtual machine manager, I can see the "bios screen" and the blinking cursor after "booting from disk", but that's it.

So there is nothing happening, at least vm manager doesn't even register any RAM usage, just one core at 100%.

How exactly are you "losing" files?

I thinke leaky abstraction is the word you're looking for, and I agree.

My goto comparison is file systems. I can call open() on a file without being bothered about almost anything behind the file descriptor. I don't care whether it's a ramdisk, an SSD, a regular hard, SMB mount over Tokenring or whatever. There is a well defined interface for me to work on and the error cases are also well defined. The complexity is hidden almost completely.

But if I want to do anything in k8s, the interface is usually exposing me to anything that goes wrong under the hood and doesn't hide anything at all.

The absolute worst example of the is Helm. It adds almost nothing for 99% of the use cases except complexity, actively stands in your way many times and the entire functionality actually used in most cases is Bash-style Variable expansion.

I wouldn't say that.

Software today, in the real business world, is extremely complex, simply because of all the layers you have to understand.

Today I have to know about Kubernetes, Helm, CI/CD, security/policy scanners, Docker, Maven, Spring, hibernate ,200 libraries, Java itself, JVM details, databases , and a bit of JavaScript, Typescript, npm, and while we're at it, react. And then of course the business logic.

I'd argue, in today's world, nobody actually understands their software completely. I'm not sure, when exactly the shift from raw dogging assembler and counting cycles to the mess of today happened, but I'd argue, software today is much much more complex and complicated.

So, startups will now work GANAM Style?

My guess is, that those 5-6W on idle that gets thrown around in so many blog posts is probably just the CPU in idle state and not the whole board with io and other stuff.

Well, no.

My Futro has some old thin client AMD CPU and the HP Elitedesk g3 mini has an i5 6500T. Both idle at 5-7W (the HP is slightly higher).

My optiplex is just an SFF, so still a regular CPU (i5 6500, without the T), regular SFF power supply, etc. And that one draws 10-15W.

I use a cheap watt meter and the values from above are from that meter.

10-15W is what my Dell optiplex idles at.

I guess, it also depends on your load. My measurements were made at "basic setup idle", so smb, k3s with a handful of idling containers, pihole. Since I'm the only user of these services and don't use them that much, the load average is often enough way below 1 (at 4 cores). It's absolutely possible that someone with higher demands and higher loads pulls more power on average.

So, basically don't use it.

I mean, I get the effort, but if you account for your own labor, the power savings probably will probably take years to amortise - even with high energy costs like here in Germany.

Just as a rule of thumb: 1W of constant power costs is at most 25cents (40cent/kwh, which is even high for Germany).

My pi 3 idles at 3-4W, my Futro at around 5-6W. I'd say that's pretty close.