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Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Posted by michael on from the rendering-aid-to-the-needy dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes "Out in Oakland, CA a group is taking donated PC's and breathing new life into them with Linux. They turn around and donate the computers to schools, build POVRAY render farms (with MOSIX) and generally promote Linux."

4 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. 850 MHz by MrBlack · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Linux cluster is 30 Athlon 850MHz PCs and up to 350 recently refurbished PCs that are Pentium 166 or better
    I sure hope the 850 MHz Athlons weren't donated by anyone....until this week my main home machine has been an PII 300. If the Athlons were rescued from landfill that makes me feel _really_ inadequate.

  2. I used to work for them by kipple · · Score: 5, Interesting

    before I had to go back to italy to serve the army. It was an excellent opportunity to learn, I was taking care with other people of the beowulf cluster - and the rendering speed was impressing, around 12 seconds to render the 'famous' pvm x-vase when the cluster was around 60 nodes.
    the interesting part was that there were little optimization on the network and on the linux - it was a standard redhat 6.2 kernel, and the computers were just put on a shelf, connected, booted with a floppy that got the image from the network and self-installed the machine, rebooted, and you had a node ready for rendering.

    on the other hand, the people working there were the most easy-going and honest I've seen so far - there were no hypocricy going on, and basically there was a place for anyone in it - still without too much trouble.

    just wanted to share that with you guys, in case you wondered if such a non profit company was really working - it is. definitively.

    anyone wanting to start something like that in norther italy? :)

    cheers

    --
    -- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
  3. Reusing old computers destroys the environment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You hook up 10 486dx2's to make a povray render farm. It consumes 10 times as much power to do the same job as a modern intel chip. Not only did you waste your time, energy, and networking hardware; you just contributed to the fact that you local nuclear or coal power plant has to chug that extra electricity,
    just to help you "reduce, reuse, and recycle".

    Does that make any sense?

  4. Computer Angels by skribe · · Score: 3, Interesting
    There's a group in Perth, Western Australia that does something similar. They collect used computer equipment, repair and refurbish it, load linux and assorted applications and then donate it to people in the community who would be otherwise unable to afford a computer. A great idea.

    They're called Computer Angels

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    Blog