Is Puppy Green?

Message

ecomoney · #61 Post by **ecomoney** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 00:36

So....what is there we can do to make puppy even "greener"....we must make a considerable carbon footprint with all of our computers. I notice puppy doesnt have a screensaver/screen blanker. Can we turn off hard disks when not in use? or is this simply a bios feature on some computers? I notice modern computers must have higher wattage power supplies..does this make them consume more energy? Does running old kit use less power?

rjbrewer · #62 Post by **rjbrewer** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 01:28

The screen goes dark on Puppy after 10 mins. of inactivity.
This makes a big difference in power use with a crt monitor,
and you can feel how much cooler the monitor is.
Running a graphical screensaver saves no power.

My p2 pc uses 90 watts; more than half goes to the crt.
It has a 125 watt power supply.
An average new Vista box uses about twice as much power
and needs a supply twice as large; even though they have
lcd monitors and are touted as being energy efficient.

I guess it comes down to how you use Puppy. When using a
laptop that's only using 20 to 50 watts, that's "Green" in my
opinion.

rjbrewer · #63 Post by **rjbrewer** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 01:28

oops double post

disciple · #64 Post by **disciple** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 06:33

I notice puppy doesnt have a screensaver/screen blanker.

?
There are screensavers. By default the screen is just blanked after a few minutes... but screensaving and blanking don't even save any power anyway.
If you want to turn the screen off, put

Code: Select all

	Option      "OffTime" "3"

in the serverlayout section of xorg.conf.[/quote]

ecomoney · #65 Post by **ecomoney** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 13:32

Thanks for that, I used it to find this page.

Im just thinking...for the cybercafe project Im currently working on, the people who work their say they have a problem, not only with power consumption, but also with people wondering away and leaving their screens on while logged into their email and such.

I understand puppy has a template xorg.conf file that it uses to create the various xorg.conf files for particular graphics setups. If that file were modified with some of the settings from the link above then that wold help their electricity bill, their (rather careless) clients privacy (to some small degree), and do their bit for the planet.

Would someone with a bit more knowledge than me explain if this can be done, and if so how to do it?

rjbrewer · #66 Post by **rjbrewer** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 16:23

The 16 inch Phillips monitor attached to my pc draws 51.5 watts
of power. When the screen goes dark after 10 mins. of inactivity
this drops to 46.5 watts. Not much savings.
If the computer is powered off and the monitor is still powered
up, the monitor is only drawing .7 (less than a watt) watts.

Something that turns off the computer after a a period of
inactivity would be ideal. I don't think an xorg configuration
would have anything to do with that?

#67 Post by **Pizzasgood** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 17:01

a typical smart-arse answer and a cop-out.

You are saying that an operating system's inability to operate hardware is a feature.

No. I didn't say anything about that. What I said is that an OS that has the ability to use the hardware should not power up the hardware for no reason, if attempting to conserve power. That is wasteful. Such an OS could initially use a slight amount more power than one that simply cannot use the devices, because it might need to do some probing of the device to prepare for the moment when the device becomes needed by the user. But then it should power down the device and wait.

Those same standards should apply to Linux. And in fact, Linux probably could use those devices just fine. I know first hand that Linux supports wifi and bluetooth. Not every single device, but many. HOWEVER, Linux doesn't turn those devices on by default, unless vendor changes the default for their distro. Otherwise, you have to TELL Linux to turn them on. That is a design choice, just like not mounting partitions unless told to, and not connecting to the net unless told to.

Whether Linux can or cannot use that machine's wifi and bluetooth is irrelevant, because even if it could use them, it would not turn them on by default, and would instead behave exactly the same as if it could not use them.

Something that turns off the computer after a a period of
inactivity would be ideal. I don't think an xorg configuration
would have anything to do with that?

There was some discussion of this recently. Barry had a blog post about it I believe. They were basing the decision on mouse activity.

I wonder if there's a built-in way to have Xorg's "screensaver" run arbitrary code. If there is, you could use that instead. Otherwise, I suppose you could patch Xorg's code to let you run arbitrary code.

canbyte · #68 Post by **canbyte** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 20:10

I got one of those little UPM/ EM100 power meters

Both machines are 4w when turned off. What the heck is all that juice doing in there? There's no mouse/sensor-on setup here.

Dell running Puppy runs at 51w doing nothing to 68w active (Seamonkey). Startup is 60-80w. No power saver available.
Dell running winME is 66-68w
Puppy is greener

Compaq running winME runs 46w idling, 68w working. Consistent.

The Compaq runs Puppy on CD & flash drive so hard drive rarely runs -very quiet.

Compaq running Puppy: draw is all over the place but seems to range 43* to 58w at idle and 60-66w working (ie watching youtube). * reduces to 40 after a long while & hd shuts down. HD - i'd guess that it saves about 2-4w when down.
Puppy -- potentially better but hard to tell. Call it a draw for now.

I wonder why Puppy is a bit agitated on Compaq? Bounces around for no apparent reason.Why this box and not the other? Something for you techies to ruminate on. Differences: no swap, runs printer which means the original 412 was modified with addition of devx. I can always try to get more data if its of interest.

Overall: Puppy wins on this sample of two. Based on machine being idle most of the time, Puppy saves a little less than 25% on the Dell or 12% between the two. Not counting other contributors like monitor, printer etc.

Go green!
Go Puppy!

rjbrewer · #69 Post by **rjbrewer** » Mon 16 Mar 2009, 20:32

Ecomoney

Measured power consumption with both pc and crt monitor.
87 watts to begin with.
After 10 mins. no mouse activity, screen dark, 82 watts.
After 20 mins. no activity, power drops to 41 watts...
essentially what the pc uses without a monitor.

So the screen blanking indeed cuts power use by more than
half.

Now the trick is to find a sleep or clean shutdown mode for
the pc itself that happens after +- 20 mins.

Monitor-107s phillips
Using Puppy 4.1.1 full install.

edit:
Disconnecting my 2 hard drives and running from usbflash
saves another 10 watts.

disciple · #70 Post by **disciple** » Tue 17 Mar 2009, 04:59

You guys are saying Puppy's default "screen blanking" which just turns the screen black saves power. With my LCD monitors it certainly doesn't, because the backlight stays on - just all the pixels are switched to black. Can you guys confirm that your monitors aren't switching to standby, like an LCD one does? If they aren't, it means a CRT monitor would use way less power displaying DOS style white text on a black background, than displaying the lighter colours used by most programs... which has interesting implications for the white text on black/black text on white/some other combination debate

rjbrewer · #71 Post by **rjbrewer** » Tue 17 Mar 2009, 22:08

disciple:

I was under the impression (probably mistaken) that "ecomoney"
was using old pcs' with crt monitors. I guess it is "standby" mode
that the crt monitors drop to after 20 minutes of non use.

My laptop with 12 inch screen never drops to standby using
mains power (I don't have a battery).

Did measure power usage of laptop with screen disconnected.
Screen uses 6-7 watts depending on brightness setting.
Thanks for the "heads-up" about the backlight staying on.
Does cutdown on lifetime of lcd screens; so I'll be turning
off power more often.

ecomoney · #72 Post by **ecomoney** » Tue 17 Mar 2009, 23:03

@rjbrewer

Thank you for taking the time to test and to post test results. Im currently doing some work for a Seamans Mission charity who run a large cybercafe from their two bases at local major seaports. They have recently asked me to give an outline of what kind of cost savings they can expect using an open source system. They do mostly use LCD monitors, but even with this information Im sure that I will be able to configure their systems to save them many hundreds of British pounds, and do their bit for the environment. One site offers around 30 computers 9:00-17:00 and the other site runs 24/7.

Im just wondering, is there a manual command that can be used to switch off hard disks? Im sure that preventing them from continuing to spin after a certain time (15 mins) will help reduce wear and tear as well as save electricity.

rjbrewer · #73 Post by **rjbrewer** » Wed 18 Mar 2009, 00:20

ecomoney wrote

Im just wondering, is there a manual command that can be used to switch off hard disks? Im sure that preventing them from continuing to spin after a certain time (15 mins) will help reduce wear and tear as well as save electricity.

I think power down drives (stop spinning?) is just available on
laptops. Laptop drives only use 1/4 or less power than 3.5 inch
pc drives anyway.

As far as wear and tear; it's just the opposite.

For instance: If you were able to start a good automobile engine
and keep it running at a nearly constant rpm, without stopping or
starting it ever; it could easily last close to a million miles.

80% or more of all wear and stress on the motor happens during
start stop modes.

Mr. Maxwell · #74 Post by **Mr. Maxwell** » Wed 18 Mar 2009, 02:26

At 666 posts you should probaly post again very quickly.

rjbrewer · #75 Post by **rjbrewer** » Wed 18 Mar 2009, 02:30

Oppornockity tunes but once.

disciple · #76 Post by **disciple** » Thu 19 Mar 2009, 04:58

Thanks for the "heads-up" about the backlight staying on.
Does cutdown on lifetime of lcd screens; so I'll be turning
off power more often.

I think maybe you missed my point. By default Puppy turns the screen black after a while, but if you add the offtime setting to xorg.conf, the screen is properly blanked and should go into standby mode.

I think power down drives (stop spinning?) is just available on
laptops. Laptop drives only use 1/4 or less power than 3.5 inch
pc drives anyway.

I've never tried that, but it is usually an option on desktop pcs in Windows, and people do claim to get substantial power savings from it.
There is a manual command, which I can't remember... but I think you must unmount the drive first.

I was under the impression (probably mistaken) that "ecomoney"
was using old pcs' with crt monitors. I guess it is "standby" mode
that the crt monitors drop to after 20 minutes of non use.

They shouldn't switch to standby with Puppy's default screen "blacking" - they should need proper screen blanking. I'm curious to know exactly what's going on

disciple · #77 Post by **disciple** » Thu 19 Mar 2009, 05:05

There is a manual command, which I can't remember

I think it is hdparm (with the right option) that you are after.[/code]

rjbrewer · #78 Post by **rjbrewer** » Thu 19 Mar 2009, 16:26

disciple:

Just to be clear about what I've found, (tried 2 different crt monitors)
on my pc.

After 10 mins. the screen goes black; moving the mouse will bring
screen back instantly.

After 20 mins. of black screen, the power used by the monitor drops
to 1-2 watts (depending on which monitor). Moving the mouse brings
screen back up slowly; just like pushing the power button.

If I remember correctly, it's done this since I started with 3.01 up
through 4.12.

I don't know how to modify xorg conf. yet; so have not messed with
any settings.

When I get a chance, I'll attach a crt to my laptop to see if there is
any difference.

rjb

disciple · #79 Post by **disciple** » Fri 20 Mar 2009, 04:15

Interesting... I wonder if there is some suspend function or something, using acpi or apm, that my machines don't support.

rjbrewer · #80 Post by **rjbrewer** » Fri 20 Mar 2009, 05:38

The bios in the pc is Phoenix 4.0 release 6.07 1998 rev. 1

Power button has sleep-wake mode.

Hard disk has timeout.

Auto suspend timeout--time in standby before entering suspend.

I've always just run default settings.

Couldn't get the laptop to run a crt.
Probably time for me to learn xorg config so I can get synaptics,
svideo, etc. working properly.
Have any suggestions where I should start?

thanks
rjb

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