[ubuntu-uk] Where are we with Green?

[Rob Beard]

andy wrote:
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> I've been listening to the BIG GREEN IT DEBATE on the register.. and
> although it's no where nearly finished (more or less just started)..
> there's already one point I'd love us to discuss.
> 
> One of the things that comes up when discussing 'Green motors' is what
> I'd like to introduce as the Land Rover paradox.
> 
> "70% of all Land Rovers ever made are still on the road."
> 
> Once you take into account the energy required throughout the life of a
> car, including assembly and destruction - are Land Rovers actually that
> bad for the environment.
> 
> IMHO, ubuntu may fit into the Land Rover, rather than Toyota Prius
> category, for a number of reasons.
> 
> 1) Power Management - where are we at with ubuntu at the moment?  My
> perception (this will/may be wrong) is that much of the onboard power
> management is managed through propreitary code, therefore ubuntu
> performs worse that XP.. par example (but much better than Vista.. on a
> hunch).
> 

My dual core 'Pentium Dual Core' is happily running at 1.2GHz at the 
moment (slowed down from 1.8GHz), it's independent per core too.  That's 
all controlled by the Powernow Daemon...

Here's the output from powernowd --help

"PowerNow Daemon v0.97, (c) 2003-2005 John Clemens
Daemon to control the speed and voltage of cpus.

This is a simple client to the CPUFreq driver, and uses
linux kernel v2.5 sysfs interface.  You need a supported
cpu, and a kernel that supports sysfs to run this daemon."

Sounds to me like it's GPL'd.

It is controlled by Powernowd too, when I tried to overclock my CPU to 
around 3GHz it kept going back to 1.8GHz/1.2GHz until I disabled 
powernowd which in turn disabled the power saving.

That's better than my desktop PC at work running XP which sometimes 
sounds like a jet engine taking off (it's a Dell Optiplex GX620 with a 
Pentium D 820 (2.8GHz) with power saving turned off in the BIOS).

> 2) Re-use.  Ubuntu saves having to re-buy PCs... However, if the
> efficiency of the new PC means that it'll use less energy, surely
> there's an argument that upgrading the hardware is more environmentally
> efficient  - we need some better data to support the ubuntu approach (if
> there is indeed one).

Ubuntu can be used in a client/server environment just like Windows 
2000/2003 Server.  This is what I'm doing at a local community centre in 
Exeter.  We're using a fairly mid spec Dell PowerEdge server with a new 
Intel Xeon Quadcore CPU (2.4Ghz) which will run Ubuntu (or possibly 
Edubuntu) with LTSP.  The client machines are old K6/2 450 machines 
which according to the AMD specs use no more than about 36 watts.  Add 
on the fact that they run completely over the network (no hard drives, 
no optical drives) they don't have any moving parts (apart from the CPU 
& PSU fans) and save energy.  They'll be attached to 19" TFT monitors.

I'd say they'd use less than my desktop PC with it's hard drives and DVD 
drive in there.

> 3) Linux versus MS.  Is there anything to suggest that linux boxes are
> more power efficient.  This doesn't have to be at a hardware/software
> level either.  More about policy and application.  Linux boxes don't
> crash, so we never shut them down.. meaning they're never off.  Discuss.
> 

Not sure on that, I'd say efficiency wise, they're probably about the 
same.  I guess you could argue that Vista with all it's fancy effects 
requires a fairly decent spec CPU and graphics card whereas Ubuntu will 
run it's fancy effects on a much lower spec machine.

With regards to never shutting the machines down, it depends on the 
user.  Some people leave their machines on due to lazyness (I can think 
of a couple of people at work who do this), others leave them on because 
they run background apps.  I guess both Linux and Windows when idle will 
use much less power plus put the screens into a standby mode.

Not sure if anyone is aware, but next month is Green Month, at least it 
is on the One Network of radio stations 
(http://commercial.gcapmedia.com/index.php?id=8 - Gemini in Devon, BRMB 
in Birmingham, Red Dragon in Cardiff etc).

In the stations we're trying to save energy by turning PCs off 
automatically at night (this is done through Active Directory), enabling 
power saving on newer PCs which support it, reminding everyone to turn 
off their monitors when not in use, combining PCs (such as legal logging 
machines which need to log output 24/7, these are being combined in some 
cases from two PCs to one), and even in some extreme cases turning off 
all the lights (including the lights in the toilet even when someone is 
in there).


> I'm coming in at a tangent, but would be interested to hear other
> people's perceptions of the 'Green-ness' of ubuntu - and some input from
> people who can give hard facts on the performance of ubuntu power
> management.

See comments above.

When we've installed the LTSP system at the community centre in Exeter 
I'm going to measure the power usage of the single terminals and the 
whole installation (server, terminals, switches etc) and compare them to 
a regular 1 to 2 year old desktop system running XP, it will be 
interesting to see how it compares.

Rob