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And in fact, you still get that noise and activity light on Windows 10 and a spinning-rust HD! On a system that wouldn't even manage to use the RAM completely

And in fact, you still get that noise and activity light on Windows 10 and a spinning-rust HD! On a system that wouldn't even manage to use the RAM completely while running on a sensible Linux install, let alone filling RAM up or swapping to disk. I mean, swapping used to be a fact of life in the late 1990s and early 2000s, even on Linux - RAM was just too cramped back then. But then we got machines with lots and lots of RAM even at the low end, and Linux became snappy and quiet-- while Windows is still as bad as ever.

deathanatos 8y ago
This — constant swapping — is what drove me to Linux. Though, the laptop I am typing this on is still using 16/32 GiB of RAM, mostly due to the "modern" web. (But that's not any operating system's fault.) RAM is, I feel, one of the more precious commodities on a machine, still. I have spinning rust in my machines (more space/$), and I've not regretted it, or really had a need for the speed an SSD could bring. (If anything, I think I'd do a hybrid install, with a small SSD and a large HDD.) But I've never once regretted upgrading RAM on a machine, and I definitely miss it on my work MBP.