Green Linux to attack power consumption

The Linux Foundation has formed a Green Linux initiative to focus on reducing the open source operating system's power consumption. 

The group is meeting next week in Ottawa where it is expected to set development priorities.

Green Linux was formed last week at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at Google's Silicon Valley campus. 

The event attracted 230 individual open source developers and employees of companies backing the Linux Foundation including Novell, Red Hat and IBM.

The Linux Foundation promotes standardisation and collaboration to further the open source operating system, and is backed by a group of commercial companies and is the official employer of Linus Torvalds.

Power consumption is a growing concern for mobile devices that seek to optimise battery life, but the group will also address the desktop and server spaces.

Although hardware is an obvious area for developers to cut power consumption, large gains can also be made with software.

Intel, for instance, has released a tool called PowerTOP that allows laptop users to monitor the power consumption of their Linux system.

It tracks which applications wake up the processor from its low power sleep mode, allowing users to stop using or tweak certain power hungry applications.

Early results have yielded a one-hour increase in battery life on some notebook computers, but the technology can also benefit desktop systems and servers.

The Collaboration Summit also highlighted efforts to improve accessibility for disabled users and its work on the iAccessible2 standard.

Delegates discussed efforts to build hardware drivers, for which the Foundation has recently formed the Linux Driver Project.