Comments on: A year without X

By: andreas

andreas — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 09:38:55 +0000

Nice peak in your life how you can ‘cope’ without X. I use a 3 year old laptop now, with Crunchbang Linux (based on Debian Squeeze) and it’s really light, so I know turned off 1 core from the bios and it still works great, even with a bit of GIMP. It’s wonderful how people are amazed when you tell them you run fine with a single core instead of a quad core with Windows.

By: Another step backwards/forwards « Notes from the Library

Another step backwards/forwards « Notes from the Library — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 22:53:37 +0000

[...] me too. So if I keep reading the blog, I imagine I’ll end up in his position too. There was an interesting comment on a recent post which had me thinking that I’m at the usual stage of minimalism now, [...]

By: Samspade

Samspade — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:23:05 +0000

I still use Puppy Linux with Fluxbox. Super efficient and very, very light.

By: What was I thinking? « Motho ke motho ka botho

What was I thinking? « Motho ke motho ka botho — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:29:23 +0000

[...] Projects « A year without X [...]

By: steve

steve — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 10:38:50 +0000

I have a 500MHz p3 lappy and the power supply transfers 40W max, it runs as a server so it runs 24/7. It has the screen down 99% of the time and I ssh into it rarely so I’d say it would use less than 30W.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:53:10 +0000

I might have to disagree. I have heard the power argument before, and a lot depends on the specific cost of power, the specific equipment you’re using and the specific way you run it.

As a generalized overview of power requirements and how hardware age is related to power consumption, I always refer to this page. Unless you’re running an old machine with an oversized power supply, and taxing the machine to beyond its intended capacity, I have a hard time believing that the power demands of a 120Mhz machine are somehow higher than some of the mid-grade desktop machines I see for sale these days.

Of course, I am no expert though.

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:47:19 +0000

True, I suppose. “Light” is relative in that sense. I do push to the extreme to illustrate the point though, so if your 8-year-old Pentium 4 is running light and fast, you have my vote.

By: John Bohlke

John Bohlke — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:45:01 +0000

The power argument really depends on how much you pay for electricity. Where I live we only pay about 10 cents/KwH. To pay off the cost of new computer hardware to upgrade from my 933 Mhz system it would take at least three years in power savings. That’s best case. Worst case is five years or more.

By: mulenmar

mulenmar — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 04:07:39 +0000

The (processing power)/watt ratio may be higher, but considering the old electronics are in a laptop designed for low-power-consumption (relative to the time of manufacture), that there’s far less processing power to begin with, and that it’s running software that doesn’t task it at all, it more than makes up for it.

Not to mention how the Linux kernel becomes more power-efficient all the time.

Besides, K. Mandla has been doing this for YEARS. I think he/she knows what he/she is doing and paying by this point.

By: aperson

aperson — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 01:13:21 +0000

All that money you save from buying older hardware is nothing compared to your electricity bill at the end of the month. Older electronics are not power efficient. You’re likely going to lose money in the long run.