Mosshead

Linux proliferation could cut e-waste in half

March 4th, 2007

via eco-geek

About 3 years ago I went to a microsoft presentation about Longhorn . The crowd gasped when the presenter commented that the next version of Windows was 500% more resource intensive than XP.

It’s possible that since then they managed to wrangle in some of that 500% increase but Microsoft Vista has been heartily criticized for it’s resource-intensiveness which renders perfectly good hardware obsolete. As people upgrade to Vista, they’ll hopefully at least recycle their now-obsolete computers responsibly at a place like FreeGeek. Even so, recycling perfectly good hardware to make a software upgrade seems a bit silly and wasteful.
There are many reasons that businesses won’t upgrade to linux desktops, but there are more reasons than ever for home computer users to consider a linux desktop instead.    The community documentation has come a long way to this end.

Unfortunately, I work in a business that does require me to get a copy of Vista for testing .NET development. I wouldn’t do .NET development if the entire state of Washington wasn’t committed to it, but if I want to do any state contracts, I have to. Seems like a terrible waste of taxpayer dollars. Hopefully it’ll run in a VM environment.  We’ll see.

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