Linux is Green!

I’ve been waiting for someone to say it, and because nobody has yet, I will.

Linux is Green!

It’s not Open Source propaganda - it just happens to be true. I can put it another way if you like. Bloatware is not green and, in particular, bloated OSes are not green. It may only be extra lines of code when you get down to it, but more lines of code eventually means the need for a more powerful cpu and more memory resources, and that means more carbon dioxide for the planet to chew on.

Linux is famous for being viable on old PCs and that’s simply because it isn’t resource hungry. There was no point in the developers deliberately bloating it because there was no advantage in it being a resource hog. By comparison, Microsoft regularly bloated Windows because it was good for business and for the PC vendors too. It was built in obsolescence - a win-win.

How Green is my Linux?

Surprisingly, it is even possible to run some versions of Linux on an old 486 running at 66 MHz with just 32 MB memory. (Yes indeed, Click here if you don’t believe it). The 486 PC; that came out around 1994, I think. 66 megahertz - think of that - it’s pre-Internet.

If you arranged the desktop OSes in order of greenness, I believe the order would be:

1. Linux
2. OS X
   Windows XP
3. Windows Vista

I actually think Windows XP is more resource hungry than OS X. That’s my impression from running them, but I may be wrong so I’ve listed them as equal. You can certainly make OS X chew up more resources by turning power saving settings off, turning all the animation settings on and having a slide show as wallpaper. The same is true of XP. Windows Vista is, of course, far worse than the rest.

Surprisingly, there is actually a Green Linux Initiative, organized by the Linux Foundation as a collaboration between hardware manufacturers, Linux developers, system vendors, and end users to improve Linux power management. There’s a lot that can be done and is being done; including winding the cpu down when it’s idle, building power aware applications, improving management of USB devices, providing more comprehensive power management features to users and so on.

Am I alone in finding it strange that, Linux is way ahead of its desktop competition in being concerned about Green issues and actually doing something about them?

Given the dash by hardware vendors IBM, HP, Dell, Sun et al, to jump on the green bandwagon, why not Microsoft (and Apple too)? If you’ve not yet noticed the hardware vendors greener-than-thou tendencies, just turn up to a virtualization presentation, and bring your polar bear with you - it’ll be welcome.

I googled in vain for any mention anywhere on the Internet of OS X and environmental implications - despite the fact that Al Gore is on the Apple executive board. Apple is big on environmentally friendly hardware, but hasn’t thought yet about software.

When a googled for Windows and green, I got 20 million hits, most of them relating to the correct windows to fit in buildings for the sake of energy efficiency and none of them to do with environmentally friendly OSes

So the question is: Will Linux’s green credentials lead to wider adoption?

I suspect it will, because green is now such a big issue. But I’m not sure how much of an impact it will have.