I'm in the process of setting up a game server (minecraft) and came across a lot of people saying how linux has noticeably higher power consumption than a Windows install would use. Especially in the #39 kernel thats recently been released.


Right now I'm dual booting LMDE x64 which is basically Debian Testing and Win7 x64. With the game server set up in Debian.

My question is would there be any noticeable power consumption difference between Fedora 15, Debian Testing, CentOS and Windows 7 when running at 24/7 game server?


I did also read about power optimisations in Fedora 15 and also older kernels using less power than some of the newer releases. CentOS being the example here for older kernels.

Basically, there's been some sort of power regression in 2.6.35+ kernels. You can read a bit more about it at Phoronix. I'm not sure how the regression compares to Win7, but as long as you find a distro with a pre 2.6.35 kernel, you should be okay. Debian stable has 2.6.32 as it's base kernel.

But power consumption is more of an issue on laptops, which your server should not be. Is your power really expensive per kW-hr? Otherwise, you're probably only looking at a couple of bucks a month.

Additionally, make sure you turn off all unnecessary services.