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Low Power, Least Resource

The technologies available to us have grown exponentially since the twentieth century. We no longer try to achieve something more to improve our daily lives; instead, we ask what we can do next for the sake of creating. Perhaps, unwittingly, we are also fostering a low-effort society made up of people who have come to expect low-effort solutions for their grandest imaginations. We have seen great technological inventions from corporations and then expect to have access to those same technologies simply because we want to. Data mining companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Apple have offered so many products for free that people have forgotten (or never knew) there is such an elaborate backbone behind them. Do we need these elaborate technological inventions to achieve our goals? Are our goals too elaborate?

Simple Computer and Network Technologies

Most consumers use basic computing functions daily: gathering information, processing and analyzing it, organizing it, and communicating it. Websites generally organize and communicate information after gathering and processing it. Gathering and processing information can largely happen automatically or semi-automatically. However, some offline, paper-based information sets still need to be digitized.

Modern websites are largely built upon content management systems which consist of HTML, PHP, CSS, and SQL databases. These sites require a web server and a database server, two servers to convey a single web page which is composed every time it is accessed. Each time a visitor accesses the page, it consumes processing power (albeit little). Whereas the page could be written once, stored once, and served many times statically. Proxy or caching servers could store copies of static pages on local networks,, preserving remote server bandwidth and Internet traffic.

This was how the Internet worked before broadband was ubiquitous. However, broadband speeds brought a human craving for constant streams of information. Libraries of information were no longer valuable. Technologies such as HTTP servers, SSH, Gopher, proxy servers, Wi-Fi, wget, curl, ftp, and many programming and scripting languages allow us to gather, process, organize, and communicate information. These simple technologies have been around for decades. Many use them passively, without considering what could be achieved with less impact.

Low Power, Least Resource

The LPLR principle states that we should use the least resources to complete a task,, and configure those resources to use the least energy required. In practice, this looks like the following:

  • Using a single-board computer or a power-sipping machine instead of a full desktop or rack unit.
  • Using an HTTP server to share static files instead of a CMS to share the same information.
  • Working from a terminal when a terminal will do and using a GUI when a GUI is needed. Thus reducing processing cycles and RAM utilization.
  • Leveraging scripting, scheduled tasks, and automation to complete repetitive tasks.
  • Offloading intensive processing during times of day when energy may cost less to produce or consume.

Most computers are designed to support the Microsoft operating system. Apple Computer produces hardware specifically for their operating system. Computer manufacturers design and release new models year after year. Processors are faster, memory and storage capacity is larger, and physical size is sometimes smaller. However, many consumers consume information online as text, audio, and video. They do not crunch large data sets or compute quantum physics equations. They often use overpowered devices for the tasks they are doing. However, the computers are underpowered for the operating systems they are running.

After a few months or years, computers running Windows will begin to slow down. They become increasingly unresponsive and will eventually be upgraded or replaced. LPLR applies to operating systems as much as it does to hardware. Therefore, explore and use alternative operating systems to practice LPLR effectively. Linux-based operating systems are an easy alternative. Linux can be installed on countless types of computers. It can also make great use of otherwise discarded Windows machines, enabling people to bring new life to their aging computers. This keeps e-waste out of landfills and reduces the demand for yet another computer so someone can surf the Internet.

LPLR in Daily Practice

As a daily practice, LPLR could look like a Raspberry Pi4 or other single-board computer as a daily driver. The desktop computer would accomplish most consumer tasks and can even support some games. Another Pi or similar computer could serve as a home server running an OpenSSH server to serve files to the Pi and any other device on the user's home network, such as a smartphone. It may make sense to leverage a platform such as Nextcloud from another RPi on the network. While Nextcloud is more than just an HTTP or OpenSSH server, it running on a low-powered single-board computer still falls within LPLR for most. Nextcloud has a host of apps you can add to it. However, we should consider if the apps are needed or simply nice to have.

My daily LPLR practice is still developing and being refined. Currently, my daily driver is an HP 6300 desktop computer running Linux Mint. My mobile devices are a 2014 model Samsung Chromebook running GalliumOS and an Android phone. I use the desktop even when I'm away from it through SSH. In doing this, I realize I am technically using more electricity by keeping the desktop running every day. However, I use the desktop to gather information through scripted downloads and torrent files, and it runs a few cron jobs that process information. Since the desktop is my daily driver, I leverage multiplexed terminal sessions to keep my environment consistent. I have leveraged several other RPis on my network for other tasks. While they are multiple machines, each serves a different primary purpose and saves significant power over their beefier counterparts. Virtual machines could have replaced the Pis. A bare-metal hypervisor would still draw more power idle than the Pis do. I have used the Pi4 as a desktop in the past with fair success. I may go back to it, or another lower-powered solution, in the future. For now, the combination of the HP desktop, Chromebook, and Android phone is working well for me.

Terminal Sessions

Terminal sessions are outside of the scope of this essay. However, they are well within the LPLR principle. Terminal sessions and terminal applications run well on low-powered computers. Terminal, or command-line, applications are generally very fast, require far less power to run, and, because of SSH, can be accessed remotely with far less power and effort. From within a terminal session, I can browse the web, listen to streaming music, email, write, manage file downloads, administer my servers, read the bible and other books, view RSS feeds, browse Reddit, download files, and more. All of this happens within a single desktop application. Compare that to running Chrome, Outlook or Thunderbird, a file manager, Spotify, an RSS viewer, and possibly something like PuTTY to admin servers. I do not even need a GUI desktop to make any of it possible. Terminal sessions take time to get used to when coming from a GUI environment. Still, they are very usable. I have used nano to write this very essay.

Conclusion

LPLR is a practical principle we can apply to almost anything we do. It asks us to pause and think about the effort we are making, the end-game we seek to achieve, and the sustainability of it all. LPLR is what spawned the conversion of my WordPress-based blog into what you see here now. Consider LPLR in your daily computing.