According to new independent tests Red Hat Linux pulls as much as 12% less power than Windows 2008 on identical hardware. It means Linux is better for reducing data center power consumption or electrical power consumption. From the report:
Our tests point to Linux as the winner of the green flag by margins that topped out at 12%. We ran multiple power consumption tests using Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.1 and SUSE Enterprise Linux 10 SP1 on four, popular 1U server machines, one each from Dell and IBM and two from HP. The results showed that while Windows Server 2008 drew slightly less power in a few test cases when it had its maximum power saving settings turned on, it was RHEL that did the best job of keeping the power draw in check across the board.
Read full research report about computer power consumption online:
Now the million dollar question, how important is green computing / green computers to you? Would you make switch to save the power?