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Linux Makes For Greener Computing

Posted by Hemos on from the saving-the-earth-and-licensing-fees dept.

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.

2 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. Packaging by essence · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Another thing is that Linux (or the BSD's) can be downloaded off the internet, while Windows requires that you buy a fresh new disk packaged in cardboard and plastic wrap. Clearly if everyone could download software and not use the packaging, that would save a lot of resources.

  2. Re:One Piece of a Very Long Report by jimicus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I once upgraded the system for her and accidentally made GNOME the default display manager, and she said to me that GNOME was much easier to use. That came as a bit of a surprise to me.

    Each to their own. One thing Gnome does have over KDE is it doesn't present you 100 options for every little thing. For a lot of people, "not being inundated with options which I don't really understand or care about" is a big plus.