Episode 58: Power Up & Freak Out | The Linux For Everyone Podcast
58A talk at the Linux App Summit about software sustainability -- and the environmental impact of power-hungry code -- was a shocking wake-up call that's too important to ignore. Please give a warm welcome to the creator of that talk, KDE's Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss].
In this episode of Linux For Everyone, we discuss Joseph's vital work with KDE Eco, and the path the project is forging to create a culture of software sustainability and inspire more power-efficient software. Our conversation might dramatically change how you think about the apps you use, and the potentially devastating ecological footprint of the software installed on millions -- if not billions -- of devices.
Joseph and I both hope this episode inspires more conversation and more awareness.To that end, here is a long list of resources and links to help you better understand the situation, and to get directly involved!
LINKS & RESOURCES:
๐ Linux For Everyone @ Mastodon: https://fosstodon.org/@Linux4Everyone
๐ KDE Eco https://eco.kde.org/
๐ The KDE Eco Handbook https://eco.kde.org/handbook/
๐ KDE Eco: Get Involved https://eco.kde.org/get-involved/
๐ The Green Metrics developer tool https://github.com/green-coding-berlin/green-metrics-tool
๐ Free and Open Source Energy Efficiency Project (FEEP) Repo https://invent.kde.org/teams/eco/feep
๐ The Hidden Life Of An Amazon User: Article https://branch.climateaction.tech/issues/issue-1/the-hidden-life-of-an-amazon-user/
๐ The Hidden Life Of An Amazon User: Interactive Project https://www.janavirgin.com/AMZ/amazon.html
๐" Sustainable Programming" online course https://open.hpi.de/courses/cleanit2021/items/5DHsS3tJsXAqfUE4q4F82Z
(see 04:20โ06:10 to go from a one CPU-second reduction to 95 thousand megawatt hours by scaling up). Choice quote: "Often, it is a quite manageable set of decisions which lead to significant differences in power consumption"
๐ "Post Collapse Computing" Parts 1-4 by Tobias Bernard https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2022/08/24/post-collapse-computing-1/
๐ GUADEC 2020: Carbon emissions by Philip Withnall https://tecnocode.co.uk/2020/09/14/guadec-2020/
๐ The German Environment Agency report comparing energy consumption of software products โ English summary on pages 22-27 https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/entwicklung-anwendung-von-bewertungsgrundlagen-fuer
CHAPTERS:
00:00:00 Welcome /home and monologue
00:08:31 Introduction: Joseph P. De Veaugh-Geiss, KDE
00:20:28 The questions we're not asking
00:23:48 Power-hungry code and fragile software
00:28:35 Carbon footprint of unwanted ads on smartphones
00:31:59 INSANE data use buying ONE book on Amazon
00:33:59 FOSS & power efficiency
00:39:57 KDE Eco
00:47:53 1st steps: Get more data
00:59:15 Resources & contacts
01:04:42 Jason's closing comments