On 03/05/2019 07:59, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Hello Friends of Free Software,
as you may have heard a number of children refuse going to school on each Friday to make people aware that the world has to act swiftly if we want to protect our stable world climate.
Free Software can help to protect the climate and the environment, because it helps to run hardware longer.
== Hardware production worst for the environment
Looking at the life cycle of hardware, the production phase contributes most to the environmental ballast. A lot of greenhouse gas emmission [1]. And use of rare earth materials, which cannot be recycled.
=> using hardware longer is environmentally friendly, even if new hardware is more energy efficient
== Free Software allows to run hardware longer
Use of Free Software can extend the life of hardware significantly. At least one third more life time in the average. There are some old examples of studies in [2], subsection 4, but also throughout the whole text. We probably find more if we search. It makes sense and in many aspects. Just think about LineageOS-MicroG giving old Smartphones a security patched operating system again.
=> Use of Free Software helps the climate.
== A series of stories about Free Software on Fridays?
This is not just a discussion list, this is also our list to tell nice stories about Free Software, connecting dots and restate to each other in new and fun ways why we all are here. Maybe we can make it a tradition: Tell one interesting thing that others may not have thought of, or have forgotten about why Free Software should be used more often.
Best, Bernhard
[1] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/timely-replacement-of-a-noteboo... Autors: Siddharth Prakash, Ran Liu, Karsten Schischke, Dr. Lutz Stobbe September 2012
[2] https://dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#tco Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)? Look at the Numbers! David A. Wheeler Revised as of July 18, 2015
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Free software also runs on a wider range of hardware, including arm which is very low powered, so while one may have a old power hogging x86 type computer when that reaches end of life, you can switch to other platforms running arm.
This is important, as to switch, people don't want to end their work flow, you can go from Windows on x86 to Debian then to ARM, and still use software such as Libreoffice.
Of course old computers can also be stripped for parts (e,g RAM which can then be used to upgrade other old computers)
For really old computers operating systems such as ToriOS (torios.top) have both PAE and Non PAE hardware support, so add life to those computers too.
Paul