Is Puppy Green?

Puppy related raves and general interest that doesn't fit anywhere else
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Lobster
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Is Puppy Green?

#1 Post by Lobster »

Whilst Redmond bloat heats up CPU's around the world
just to keep itself running . . .
http://maratux.blogspot.com/2009/02/win ... ution.html

I read this and recalled a recent conversation I had with a forest
http://www.handlewithlinux.com/more-rea ... n-is-linux

I wonder if Puppy is green?
Seem to remember a conversation about clickless kernel
- did not understand it at the time .. . .
Because Puppy runs from RAM we save battery life as the HD can be powered down
And Sage whilst not fuming about the outrages of Capitalism
advocates 'junk' PC's
Warren who is running Deep Thought recycles computers
Barry is building a windmill.

Could we be more green and save the planet?
Last edited by Lobster on Sat 07 Nov 2009, 08:53, edited 1 time in total.
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bambuko
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Re: Is Puppy Green?

#2 Post by bambuko »

Lobster wrote:. . . Could we be more green and save the planet?
common misconception :lol: about having to "save the planet"
it doesn't need saving :wink: it will do fine with or without us
the only thing we need to save is our own bacon :cry:
so keep planet out of this discussion 8)

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hillside
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#3 Post by hillside »

Yes, yes, yes. Keeping old equipment useful instead of spending resources on new heaps of metal and plastic is green.

Of course, the greenest of people are still going to hell in a hand basket, just a little less quickly.

the planet ... doesn't need saving it will do fine with or without us
Yes, there will be some kind of mass orbiting the sun no matter what we do, but I'd like to at least maintain the current ecological equilibrium as best we can. It might be nice to restore some of what we have already lost, but stopping the (not so) slow spiral to a-worse-place-than-we-are-in-now would be the first step.

Back to Puppy (and other small Linuxes). If people made a real effort to reuse their old equipment instead of always buying new, it could make a significant difference in energy use and resource depletion. I don't know how much energy it takes to manufacture a new computer system, but it has to be substantial.

I'm hoping that we will soon see some new technology coming to market in the solar energy area. I read about some folks who have developed a glass coating that causes light to scatter horizontally when it strikes the surface. The light then bounces inside the glass structure to the edges where solar cells are mounted to collect the energy. They can collect all the energy from the glass surface by using a minimal number of cells around the outside edge, thus greatly reducing the cost of the solar energy produced. I'm ready to buy that when they get it to market. I want a solar Puppy!

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#4 Post by DMcCunney »

hillside wrote:Yes, there will be some kind of mass orbiting the sun no matter what we do, but I'd like to at least maintain the current ecological equilibrium as best we can. It might be nice to restore some of what we have already lost, but stopping the (not so) slow spiral to a-worse-place-than-we-are-in-now would be the first step.
Don't expect it. One question to ask is how much of global warming is man-made, and how much is the result of really long term climate cycles. Remember, our recorded history has taken place since coming out of a glaciation period. The overall trend has been warmer for a long time.

Human activity has contributed to, but not caused the problems, and there is a limit to what human activity can do to limit or reverse it.
Back to Puppy (and other small Linuxes). If people made a real effort to reuse their old equipment instead of always buying new, it could make a significant difference in energy use and resource depletion. I don't know how much energy it takes to manufacture a new computer system, but it has to be substantial.
On the obverse, power consumption is dropping in current systems, simply because power has a monetary cost. The manufacturers are working on power saving features to reduce the total cost of ownership of a system. That old system you keep running instead of upgrading may use a lot more power than the newer machine you pass on.

I've got Puppy running on an old notebook I was given by a friend, who bought a newer, faster system. It's a device using power in my home that wasn't there before, and I now use more energy because I'm running Puppy.

The questions are very seldom as simple as they sound.
I'm hoping that we will soon see some new technology coming to market in the solar energy area. I read about some folks who have developed a glass coating that causes light to scatter horizontally when it strikes the surface. The light then bounces inside the glass structure to the edges where solar cells are mounted to collect the energy. They can collect all the energy from the glass surface by using a minimal number of cells around the outside edge, thus greatly reducing the cost of the solar energy produced. I'm ready to buy that when they get it to market. I want a solar Puppy!
I used to be involved in alternative energy, many years ago. The barrier then was the same as it is now: people stayed with traditional energy sources because they were ultimately cheaper than going the alternative route. The big wins in the US were installing solar hot water heaters, which accounted for about 20% of normal home energy usage, and showed a relatively short payback. The other big win was passive - upgrade your insulation to better retain and use the heat you you needed to generate in cold weather.

Photovoltaics are a different matter, and semiconductor economics apply. The big cost in solar cells is the fab to make them, and a good chunk of the cost of a solar panel will be an amortized share of the cost of financing the plant. The more you make, the larger a base you have over which to spread the cost, and the cheaper you can price the product. There were suggestions years back that the US government might subsidize some costs of photovoltaic manufacture to help get the economies of scale to kick in earlier.

There was a chap I heard about years ago who claimed to have invented a method to make amorphous solar cells, rather than crystalline. They could be made in any configuration desired, and could even convert waste heat. When I saw the latter, I said "Whoa! Waste heat? If this is for real, this guy will become the richest man n the world!"

It never hit the market, so I assume there were problems in moving from lab to production. The guy in question was a recognized expert in the industry, so the claim wasn't BS. He thought he could do it.
______
Dennis

aarf

#5 Post by aarf »

Image
this one collects in the center not edges
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22204/?a=f

aarf

#6 Post by aarf »

there are a few for heat into electricity too:
nanotennas
Thermoelectrics (click the link to bypass the advert)
Ener-G-Rotors (ditto)
ElectraTherm

and yes the road from laboratory to market is long and windy passing through many precipitous mountain paths.
Last edited by aarf on Sat 28 Feb 2009, 08:45, edited 3 times in total.

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ttuuxxx
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Re: Is Puppy Green?

#7 Post by ttuuxxx »

Lobster wrote:Whilst Redmond bloat heats up CPU's around the world
just to keep itself running . . .
http://maratux.blogspot.com/2009/02/win ... ution.html

I read this and recalled a recent conversation I had with a forest
http://www.handlewithlinux.com/more-rea ... n-is-linux

I wonder if Puppy is green?
Seem to remember a conversation about clickless kernel
- did not understand it at the time .. . .
Because Puppy runs from RAM we save battery life as the HD can be powered down
And Sage whilst not fuming about the outrages of Capitalism
advocates 'junk' PC's
Warren who is running Deep Though recycles computers
Barry is building a windmill.

Could we be more green and save the planet?
Well Lobster yes and no, well 4.2 is different, by far Cpu's and graphic cards take the most watts, not the hard drives, not even close, Plus out of the box Gxine is terrible for playing cd's, live audio streams, video's, etc all around 20% CPU usage, we are talking a lot of killer watts, Alsaplayer takes about 4% which alone will triple the amount of your laptop battery, Pmusic is a terrible applications, when I run it, my really fast pc, with 4 gigs of ddr2 800, responds like a 233mmx, That program should be removed asap. The mouse gitters all over the screen, the pages move slow, etc. Also all that eye candy 4.2 has is another waste of electricity, every time I move a window over the screen it erases the icons, clock etc, what ever is on the desktop, then it has to replace it. That must take a lot of power also. When users tested the VLC I complied on old computers vs Gxine they noticed that VLC was using a min 1/2 of cpu resources. I pesonally if were going to make a green version of puppy I would make the applications as small as possible, compiled as i386. and remove, pwidgets,pmusic,Gxine, replace with alsaplayer,vlc.I would keep the small version of seamonkey I made, since its smaller than firefox, or opera. I probably would get rid of Pburn also, ever notice your screen blink when you start it up, and it says installing, I bet thats a power spike, you don't get that with any other burner. I don't blame zigbert, I think its more to do with gtkdialog. The applications are lite for sure, but they sure to take the cpu or memory usage. Oh ya remember at the time VLC was being test against gxine, VLC was double the size and 1/2 the resources, out of the box. Sure users can probably configure it better but most don't. The way it comes is the way its played. Building applications GUI's with foxtoolkit would be the greener way to go.
ttuuxxx
http://audio.online-convert.com/ <-- excellent site
http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/A-codecs/ <-- Codec Test Files
http://html5games.com/ <-- excellent HTML5 games :)

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#8 Post by Pizzasgood »

I pesonally if were going to make a green version of puppy I would .......
I would remove X and all gui programs, add more virtual terminals, the fbcon module, Vim, Nethack, Links, Mplayer, and either libcaca or aalib. And I would add this command to ~/.bashrc

Code: Select all

export PS1='\[\033[1;33;42m\]\$ \[\033[0;34;42m\]'


Just kidding about that last one, I actually prefer this:

Code: Select all

export PS1='\[\033[0;31m\]\$ \[\033[0;0m\]'
[size=75]Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. --Muad'Dib[/size]
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#9 Post by 01micko »

Any one remember the old AT, where the monitor displayed green ? I don't think any version of puppy no matter how chopped down could run on those!
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DMcCunney
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#10 Post by DMcCunney »

01micko wrote:Any one remember the old AT, where the monitor displayed green ? I don't think any version of puppy no matter how chopped down could run on those!
Yes, I do. And I used to have an Amdek amber monitor connected to my ancient XT clone, driven by a Hercules graphics card. I also spent way too much time in front of IBM 3270 terminals connected to mainframes (and block-mode terminals have a completely different notion of full screen editing than we are used to) as well as genuine DEC VT-100 terminals, whose emulation is still buried in things like rxvt.

Yes, Puppy could run on one of those monitors. Just dispense with X and GUIs and do everything from a command line... :)
______
Dennis

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sunburnt
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#11 Post by sunburnt »

The problem with old PCs is that they use lots of energy.
My old K6 400mhz server uses about 10 times the electricty of a NAS unit!
Most VIA ITX PC boards are very green & faster than an Atom (5 watts).
AMD showed a Athlon cpu that uses 15 watts, & a X2 that uses 22 watts!

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#12 Post by 01micko »

DMcCunney wrote:
Yes, Puppy could run on one of those monitors. Just dispense with X and GUIs and do everything from a command line... :)
______
Dennis
The monitor, maybe, some serious kernel hacking would be needed for anything else from that era! (IMO)
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aarf

#13 Post by aarf »

company called http://geodynamics.com.au has just completed tests for geothermal energy in oz. details at page. so when they get this on grid everyone will be required to use as much energy as possible to dissipate accumulated earth heat.

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#14 Post by Lobster »

Interesting comments guys. :)

For me being green is also about sustainability and efficiency.
So I would much rather use a solar or lower energy mobile phone
as my main computer BUT it is not yet up to the job.

Maybe there is a phone you can plug a keyboard, monitor and mouse in
(OK adapters needed) and run Linux on?

Yes phones with LCD projectors (bigger screens) are coming
and then you will have two projectors - one for the keyboard
and to be honest a virtual mouse (just moving your hand about)
is coming.

Will Puppy run on such a device?
Yes.
Already Woof is becoming a 'Pic and Mix' technology
thanks to Barry's usual excellence.

Deep Thought is being updated and crafted for ease of use
and end user appeal.

Puppy
Turns everyone Green . . .
:mrgreen:
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aarf

#15 Post by aarf »

Lobster wrote:
For me being green is also about sustainability and efficiency.

Puppy
Turns everyone Green . . .
:mrgreen:
sustainability!
there is enough geothermal energy in this planet to last so far into the future that earthlings will have long left for "greener" pastures in another galaxy before it is exhausted, even if it is used in the most inefficient manner available..

aarf

#16 Post by aarf »

what you would be more advised to take aim at is the politics of the limited pie.

eden6000
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#17 Post by eden6000 »

And what about this??? It's in italian, but it's easy to understand (or you can always translate it...) http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solare_termodinamico
Just imagine how many areas there are in the world like deserts where you could build such plants....we could solve energy needs for all the planet...if only we were less individualist......

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#18 Post by eden6000 »

edit: this is the same in english...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy

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#19 Post by ecomoney »

Puppy is TOTALLY green!

Not only does it effectively double to triple the lifespan of a useable computer, but it gives people reliable free access to the only (comparatively) unrestricted and unbiased information source there is...the internet. If we are as a species to avoid environmental collapse, we need to be educated and informed. We also need to update and reform the our financial system, and the activities that are made "profitable" by it. With the general amount of debt in most countries vastly surpassing the amount of money there is to pay it back, new technologies find it hard to gain a foothold while there is so much money invested in old technology...i.e. OIL

The "light bulb effect" (make them last half as long, sell twice as many) doesnt just apply to commercial software and computers, it applies to all technology we use, cars, washing machines etc. Linux/Open source is currently the only example I know of of unrestricted, licience free and non commercially driven technology around. Economic literacy from free media like the internet, together with the open source development methodology (which could equally be applied to cars and other technology should patents not exist to prevent it), will eventually produce a change in our mindset.

All of humankinds problems have always been resolved using technology, and puppy/linux is one of the first examples of the type of technology that will progress us as a species.

I recommend anyone reading that cares about these things to watch the most popular "free" film in the world, that is only able to be delivered because of free software and internet technology. This film is called "Zeitgeist" and can be viewed from here
Puppy Linux's [url=http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=296352#296352]Mission[/url]

Sorry, my server is down atm!

aarf

#20 Post by aarf »

With the general amount of debt in most countries vastly surpassing the amount of money there is to pay it back
i always assumed money was printed by governments, i didnt realize that it was a gift from the gods.
humankinds problems have always been resolved using technology
you mean like nuclear weapons and jet fighters/bombers?

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