You still needed something to compare to, of course. When I first started using Linux (kernel 1.2.8, I believe?) it took 8 hours to compile a kernel on my 486d

You still needed something to compare to, of course. When I first started using Linux (kernel 1.2.8, I believe?) it took 8 hours to compile a kernel on my 486dx/33 with 4MB of RAM. The endless hours of hard disk thrashing only told me that my computer was working very hard to compile lots of lines of code. It was only years (?) later when I upgraded to 16GB that I realized this should only have been taking minutes.