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Matthew Garrett did some quick calculations to figure out how much electricity the world wastes thanks to Adobe’s inefficient Flash player. Now I don’t use Adobe’s Flash player (partly because I’m no fan of poorly-coded proprietary software, but also partly because Adobe lies about its Linux support), but I’ve noticed that Flash on the machines of other people seems to make fans run, and Gnash eats up a lot of CPU too.

I realize that there’s probably little chance that Adobe cares that releasing their source code under an open license would allow them to support Linux without the little “but 32-bit x86 only” caveat they occasionally slap on their download pages, but would the argument that a more efficient Flash player would stop wasting electricity and save a few pretty trees go any further?

I’m sure a couple of hours with debugging symbols and Powertop and the source code could improve things.