[NCLUG] PC for Linux (Ubuntu)

[John L. Bass]

A couple years ago, I took a Green Advocacy position over distributed 
net computing projects, that I still think applies today, and even more.

It takes several megawatt's of power to provide the computing used by 
folding.stanford.edu (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home). 
Buying a larger, more power hungry machine ... or keeping an older power 
slurping slug powered up for distributed projects ... just makes our 
global energy problems worse.

This includes leaving desktop machines powered up 24x7, rather than 
powering them down or letting them drop into low power standby mode.

Larger power hungry cpu's like Itaniums, Xeon's, and other 64 bit 
processors have a clear place in our world when the user needs to have a 
high end CAD, scientific computing, or other industrial strength 
application for real work. To run a browser, or typical office 
application, or other light weight application with these machines is 
just wasting power ... kind of like driving a Peterbuilt tractor as a 
commuter car just because your ego needs the strokes of having an 
oversized polluting monster.

Conservation starts with everybody in a way that makes sense.

John

Wirt Wolff wrote:
> Ben West wrote:
>> Renaissance phail.   should do fine, not sure why you would run 
>> 64-bit...
>>   
> So you can contribute to folding at home protein folding simulations 
> project with your multiple cores! ;) http://folding.stanford.edu
>
> So your development efforts and debugging contributions are not 
> already out of da... no, that's a whole nother topic. Software that 
> requires or runs better with 64-bit is a good reason even if you're 
> not using decent amounts of ram.
>