On Mon Mar 16 12:11:34 +0100 2026, [email protected] wrote: > I'm continuously trying to improve arguments to sell the idea that > Plan9 has its points. > > The present context (and enduring context) of explosion of energy > costs is an opportyunity to leverage. > > Are there some studies comparing the energy costs between OSes? > demonstrating that a simpler and smaller OS can not only run on a low > energy device (that can't host a fat OS) and that, furthermore, even > on the same hardware, for the same task, plan9 uses less resources > than another OS? > > I'm convinced, for example, that if "researchers" about the so-called > "global warming" were redacting their papers using kerTeX, on Plan9, > instead of TexLive, we will not be in a "global warming" era but > in a glacial one i.e. that this is the "global warming" buzz and > the exchange and the papers around it that are wasting energy and > generating the denounced heat.
If your argument is about power consumption, let's keep in mind the fact that we have practically no powersaving code whatsoever for any hardware and typically choose to ignore the problem. We don't even have suspend to RAM or disk. Our model also almost mandates running multiple machines with no interruption as part of our distributed network. On the other hand, it's possible to install a linux distribution to any Plan 9-supported hardware and configure it in a way that aggressively saves power. I went pretty far down the rabbit hole at one point getting a x220 thinkpad or similar to use less than 5W most of the time. No doubt compiling a Latex document will spike consumption, but either way I don't think energy savings is where Plan 9 wins. Cheers, qwx ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/Tacc477007dd06ec0-M284b3d588099cb25b1f61a15 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
