Status of 6.0 for production systems

[Chris]

Ted Mittelstaedt wrote:
> 
 >
 >> -----Original Message-----
 >> From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
 >> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Michael Vince


 >> While most people aren't using a pentium 1 to run a water sprinkler
 >> system, there are a countless amount of people using machines
 >> for things
 >> that aren't ideally power efficient. A lot of people using old PCs and
 >> Internet gateways in their home network and nothing else. This is a 24
 >> hour PC running just to provide Internet where a basic Netgear home
 >> router 500ma device can do it just as well, (5volts * 0.5amp =
 >> 2.5watts), a lot of people use FreeBSD as a server in some way on a
 >> network and need to keep it somewhat up to date for security reasons
 >> this also means 24 hour running.
 >
 >
 >
 > Hmm - let's see now, where does this extra "wasted" power go?  It
 > is turned into heat.  Which heats your house.  Which means you do


A lot of it doesn't, it gets lost to the atmosphere at the power station 
and in transmission losses.

 > not have to run the furnace so much, thus saving energy there.


If you mean gas fired, almost all the heat is generated inside your house

 >
 > So you spend more energy to run inefficient PC's and save energy
 > in not running your furnace.  Seems to me to be a wash, here.


So the saving of C02 emissions by reducing your gas heating is not as 
great as the extra C02 emissions generated by your PC, by quite a large 
amount I believe.

 >
 > I should also point out that in many areas power is generated by
 > wind.  Here in the Pacific NW you can pay a bit extra on your
 > power bill to have all your electricity come from wind if you want.


I wish we could have more commitment to sustainable energy in UK but UK 
governments noise about it _is_ wash sadly.

 >> A lot of people on the FreeBSD mailing
 >> lists like the idea of getting rid of their clunky old PC routers and
 >> still using a good firewall like Packet Filter by using the MIPS based
 >> linksys WRT54G router that could run FreeBSD, while there is no
 >> port for
 >> this on FreeBSD the closest front for this would be NetBSD.
 >>
 >
 >
 > At the ISP I work at we USED to recommend Linksys routers.  Then
 > we found that without exception they fail after about a year to two
 > of continuous use.  Therefore the person goes and buys another router.
 > Talk about wasted energy of manufacture and increased use of landfill
 > space.


That is indeed a waste but consider that in that year the PC at 150 
watts has consumed 60 times as much power as the router at 2.5 watts. I 
make that 1314kWh for the PC and 21.9kWh for the router 24/7 for a year. 
Anyone know how much power it takes to manufacture and deliver a small 
router? And maybe other routers last a bit longer.

Where this comes back just a little to topic is if an OS such as FreeBSD 
can be made to run as effectively on an older PC as Windows on a new PC 
the new PC doesn't have to be manufactured and the old PC doesn't have 
to go into landfill. And then the FreeBSD project _is_ saving the world.

 >
 > You need to rethink your views on energy.  The problem in the world
 > today is not electrical energy.  We can generate all the electric
 > power we could ever need using wind energy, for very little more


There is actually some debate about how much sustainable energy we can 
produce globally, and we also have to think about the world tomorrow 
when low consuming countries convert to consumer societies, eg China.

 > than burning fossil fuel - and in many places, at a lower cost than
 > fossil-fuel generation if you subtract the initial investment costs.
 > (most fossil fuel generating plants have long since paid off their
 > initial investments)



In the end I think any discussion which can start us thinking about how 
we individually consume and why and how we should reduce our consumption 
is positive. Ie whether using an old PC or a router, turning it off when 
it is not actually being used is win-win. On that point, I believe the 
ATX power supply should be made illegal - in the UK PC's and monitors 
which are 'shutdown' but not switched off at the wall use up the output 
of a medium sized power station.

Chris