Linux Makes For Greener Computing

An anonymous reader writes "The UK Government reckons that servers with Linux installed are greener than those running Windows. " The reasoning is that Open Source software tends to have lower hardware requirements and requires less frequent hardware upgrades to "keep up with the Joneses"; the Tory shadow chancellor has estimated that the UK could save ~600 million pounds per year by switching to Linux.

Comments

One Piece of a Very Long Report

[eldavojohn]

I recall this being submitted twice at the beginning of the month and I had skimmed the full report[PDF WARNING!].

If you look over that, you'll see what specific software they did their trials with, the security issues, concerns about the SCO case, the scope of their trials & what recommendations they left.

However, the only section being discussed in the article is this one:

Hardware resources and the "Green" agenda
One of the benefits frequently put forward for the use of Open Source Software is the level of resources needed to support it. This means that for equivalent Open Source and Microsoft Windows systems, the Open Source system will require less memory and a slower processor speed for the same functionality.

Open Source operating systems such as Linux do not usually have the regular major upgrades that are a feature of Windows, and thus do not have the requirement that goes with these upgrades for a new or upgraded computer to run them. This means that a computer running Linux can have a significantly longer working life than an equivalent computer running Windows. This has the potential to impact significantly on costs, including purchase of software and hardware, and indirectly by reducing business disruption whilst implementing change and upgrading. There are also potential Green Agenda benefits, through reducing the energy and resources consumed in manufacturing replacement equipment, and reducing landfill requirements and costs arising from disposal of redundant equipment.

Industry observers quote a typical hardware refresh period for Microsoft Windows systems as 3-4 years; a major UK manufacturing organisation quotes its hardware refresh period for Linux systems as 6-8 years.

Aside from that, the report has your basic run of the mill attitude of OSS being great financially & security wise but, oh, it would take so many resources to train everyone:

Lessons learned: Adoption of Open Source, particularly for the desktop, requires investment in planning, training of users, development of skills for implementation and support, and detailed consideration of migration and interoperability issues.