The concern for code duplication is valid, but as the article mentioned it is also a while off until the Nova project is mainlined. I honestly never thought of how the work to bring in Rust to mainline may in effect lead to a more complete deprecation of older hardware as we start to change API’s older/unmaintained components aren’t updated. On the flip side, trimming out older stuff might save maintainer work going forward.
My current laptop I bought used and didn’t realize that HD wasn’t 1080p, but rather 720p… (1080p is apparently FHD), whoops. I’m currently using a Latitude 7290 for reference and it more than meets all my regular needs (other than the screen resolution…). I have been using a tiling window manager and moving to apps that don’t waste as much space on my screen to try to help compensate.
Assuming Desktop is 1080p is probably reasonable, but there are a ton of good used business laptops that are still 720p, so it’s probably going to stick around for a while (also, why encourage e-waste).
For reference, my laptops specks are:
As long as I stay out of VM’s and do my development in lightweight editors and containers, this hardware could technically last me a while (also, I think the 7x90 series Latitudes are some of my favorite laptops).