The Insane Power Use Of Benchmarking Linux Every Day

While a lot of results are produced on LinuxBenchmarking.com of daily automated open-source/Linux tests and separately on Phoronix.com, these results do not come free but require a great deal of resources to keep going.

Last month seemed rather heavy with the power use of a 50+ system Linux benchmarking farm but this trailing 30 days has been even worse in our efforts to produce daily Linux benchmarks catered to the enthusiast community... 3449 kwh!

While I hate having to always mention it, the numbers lay it out rather bluntly... While trying to put out more Linux benchmarks, better cater to the Phoronix-reading Linux enthusiasts with better and more relevant advertisements, write more researches pieces, etc, the energy costs have more than doubled over the past year! With the ad-free LinuxBenchmarking.com and OpenBenchmarking.org, significant investments have been made for Linux testing, yet while energy costs have doubled, the Phoronix Premium subscription rates are mostly flat and advertisement revenues have fallen. Phoromatic already controls the Wake-On-LAN, automatic power offs, and other items for trying to keep the systems as energy efficient as possible.

Extensive pieces on items like why the Linux 4.2 kernel is messing up on systems and big Linux GPU/driver comparisons require a lot of resources, not just higher energy bills. Thus with hesitation and necessity I'd once again like to remind open-source/Linux readers at Phoronix that if you appreciate all of the work largely invested by myself (and the great work this summer from our intern Eric! and the few other freelance contributors) that if you appreciate the many articles, open-source benchmarking software, and other work, that you please consider subscribing to Phoronix Premium. You can also consider a PayPal tip or Bitcoin to help the cause. At the very least, please don't block advertisements while browsing Phoronix.com; if you see some obnoxious or outright problematic ad, please just report it via one the forums or one of the social networks so that the issue can be corrected. Thank you for your support.