What hardware are you using?

[tlmiller]

Even base debian 4.9 has been patched (64-bit)

[crosscourt]

Yes most 64bit systems particularly the ones with 4.4, 4.9 and 4.14 had the patches available very quickly. Others modified kernels such as Mint with the 4.13 version.

[Rademes]

I have got only 1GB of RAM on that laptop, and CPU does not supporting x64. That was the main reason, why my aunt has bought new laptop. She needs latest Skype and Discord for videocalls. When she bought that laptop, it has 512mb RAM only and crazy slow 80GB HDD. So it has already been upgraded - 1GB RAM and Kingston SSD... No more room for upgrading...and no more necessary components available.

[crosscourt]

Those are good upgrades and should help.

[crosscourt]

Changing out the Sandy Bridge G 630 processor for a i3 3240 Ivy Bridge for better performance and the fact its patched against the meltdown/spectre issues. Sandy Bridge will never see any help as it stands now. This is with my Dell Optiplex 7010 sff with a26 bios.

[crosscourt]

Im going to linger with the Ivy bridge systems. Getting rid of my older Vostro 230/E8500 both because of lack of bios update and the fact that the i5 3.4ghz cpu Im using is so much quicker and cooler to run with the other systems.

[tlmiller]

I actually am playing around with an E6510 Latitude right now. We were going to toss it to recycling at work, so I'm playing with it for a little while. Obviously no bios updates going to be coming for it, but I'm just playing around with some other desktops. Running Debian 9, it has an i7 620m w/ 8 GB ram and I replaced the old multi-platter 7200rpm 500 GB drive with a newer (although still slow) single platter 7200rpm 500 GB drive. Has a 1600x900 lcd, so it's usable. Currently trying lxqt again on it.

[crosscourt]

Im going to keep my E5410 laptops for now even though they are vulnerable. I got them for a great price and honestly dont want to have to replace them this quickly.

[tlmiller]

Not sure how long I'll hold onto the E6510. Honestly, if i wanted, I'd be permitted to keep it as we were intending only to recycle it. I have no desire to keep a 15" laptop though (I will say I think the E6x10 were the nicest LOOKING of the E series latitudes).

[crosscourt]

Even with all the patches and bios updates, there have been no exploits reported so far. With software patches and microcodes i think most peoples chances are pretty good of avoiding issues. Servers, thats another story.