From energy savings to longer lifespans for equipment, Linux can improve the eco-credentials of your technology environment, says Jack Wallen.
How do you go green without going to the lengths of installing solar panels on your roof? If you are using Linux, or thinking of using it, you are already one step ahead of most people. Here are 10 solid ways to start thinking green in your IT department.
1. Reduced landfill
With Linux, you can keep using older hardware, even if you are using the latest version of your distribution. When you use Linux, you do not have to throw away the ugly packaging that typically comes with software. And there are no transportation costs for shipping distributions from the warehouse to your retail store.
According to a study by the Office of Government Commerce in 2004, Windows users are obliged to upgrade their computers twice as often as Linux users: "Industry observers quote a typical hardware refresh period for Microsoft Windows systems as three to four years; a major UK manufacturing organisation quotes its hardware refresh period for Linux systems as six to eight years."
2. PowerTop
This little gem of an application can help you learn how to make your laptops and desktops more efficient.
When you run PowerTop, it examines your system and provides tips on how to improve your energy performance. When I run PowerTop on my laptop, I get this suggestion: "Disable 'hal' from polling your CD-ROM with: hal-disable-polling --device /dev/scd0 — 'hal' is the component that auto-opens a window if you plug in a CD but disables Sata power saving from kicking in."
Some of PowerTop's suggestions will even tell you how much wattage you can save by killing or reconfiguring services. Even though the main page for PowerTop states it is for machines with Intel processors, it will work on AMD-based machines as well.
3. Netbooks
Not only are netbooks here to stay, they are growing faster than many predicted. And a number of these netbooks are optimised for long battery life by minimising power usage.
The primary goals of the Moblin operating system, a project originally led by Intel, are low power and high battery life. Moblin is Linux-based and is only for netbooks.
Another feature that makes netbooks especially green is their no-moving-parts storage, which means they should have a longer lifespan than the standard notebook. So netbooks are one of the greener options available. And no matter how well Windows 7 is received, it cannot beat the cost of Linux on a netbook.
4. Zonbu
I have used both the desktop and laptop versions of the the Zonbu hybrid computing system and I can attest that these pieces of hardware are some of the greenest computers I have ever experienced.
The Zonbu laptop's battery life is among the best I have encountered on a notebook — especially when running a lightweight desktop such as Enlightenment.
And the Zonbu Mini is like a netbook for your desktop. Zonbu's Elastic Drive is effectively remote storage. There is no extra hardware to buy or to throw away when it fails. And the Zonbu operating system is Energy Star compliant and optimised for low power consumption.
5. Money savings
This point may not seem green, but you can use the money you save using Linux to green up other aspects of your business or home.
Also, because you are not spending money on boxed software, you are not increasing the carbon footprint of the companies that put CDs and printed licence agreements — which no-one will read anyway — in shrink-wrapped boxes, and ship them via smoke-belching trucks. Instead, just download an ISO image of a Linux distribution, or binary of an application, and install it. No waste. No guilt.
6. Fewer energy-demanding desktops
If you are like me, you enjoy using alternative desktops. With nearly every laptop I use, one of the first things I do is install Enlightenment because it uses far less CPU power, and hence far less energy, than Gnome or K Desktop Environment (KDE).
Using these desktops has another benefit. Because they will use fewer CPU cycles, they could, theoretically, extend the life of your machine. But even though...
Talkback
A very interesting and informative article. However, I had always imagined that Linux did not control power very well, on the somewhat unscientific basis that my laptop fans appear to run more frequently when using Linux.
I was interested to read about the tickless kernel and surprised to find that I'm already using it. Powertop sounds like a very useful tool to help reduce demand on the processor.
As a consequence of reading this article, I'm going to investigate turning off services I don't use/require and, similarly, unnecessary start up programmes. Although I have always done this in Windows, I have never thought to do this in Linux as they don't impact on performance and start up times in the same way.
From it's website, Zonbu looks as though it might be quite a polished product for those that wish to go that way. Similar in concept to Ulteo, which has yet to find it's polish unfortunately as it was first out of the starter's block.
This is normally one of the first things I do, after installing a new version. I have yet to re-compile a kernel, but am going to give it a try. As I am now almost windowless( only on one machine) I am leery about turning off windows services as they are dependent on too many other services, and can really screw things up.