On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 07:55:56AM +0100, andy wrote: > Hello all > > As part of my studies I must draw up a spec for providing a hypothetical > building with power sourced solely from renewables (solar, PV, wind). > This building is an educational establishment for about 20 people using > computers. The budget is (naturally) tight. > > Logically, before one powers a building, one needs to ensure that the > existing loads are the most efficient that they can be so that the > supply is not being wasted by hungry loads. > > What I want to find out is whether anyone here knows of any > studies/reports that identifies whether or not there is a difference in > the energy efficiency among GNU/Linux systems, Mac and Microsoft. I bet it's pretty hard to find a reasonable, non-biased study about this, but if you find one, I'd be intrigued. > > I can easily make the argument that licensing and maintenance costs > would be cheaper using GNU/Linux, as well as recommending either a > system of laptops and/or a system of thin clients. ISTM that regardless of who's software is more efficient, arguably the best method is thin clients, from an energy perspecitve. This is based on the assumption that you will have a few 24/7 machines anyway. And that points, at least in my mind, a little bit towards OSS because of the inexpensive virtualization options. A few physical machines running at nearly full capacity seems to me to be more energy efficient than a bunch of machines running at lower loads. But that is all idle speculation around the water cooler. A
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