Regarding the loud fan you should be able to run with NvidiaPrimus or Bumblebee - I provision laptops like this for my developers and switching off the Nvidia graphics to only use it when it's specifically requested really saves on battery. Also there is the TLP configuration which can extend your battery to a decent amount of time.
When you consider that livestock produce methane and are fed high quality grain and beans among other vegetables the findings are very questionable.
There is an overwhelming consensus from multiple academic studies showing the opposite in terms of environmental impact. Considering that the amount of grain used to feed relatively few cattle could be feeding many more humans it is amazing.
It is true that there are very sustainable and very unsustainable agricultural practices in the growing of food... but that is a totally different thing from the findings of this study.
Must be a response to the UN + WHO noises recently.
Testing web application changes on one screen... tailing the logs on the other. Monitoring on one screen, remote terminals on the other... IDE on one screen... 3 different browsers on the other. Really makes a big difference when working as devops to have two screens. Is significantly faster for me and easier than using one.
Personally I think this is just bad press for Linux by the Register and the article has an agenda.
I do not need to tinker with my Linux environment, my family has been using Linux on the desktop for years...
Just because some dev prefers a MAC and seems to be using a terribly broken system with bad package management and dependency issues does not mean the KDE, Gnome, Unity, Lxde, Fluxbox, E17, Openbox or Xfce... to name a few are failures on the desktop.
My E17 setup is vastly superior to any boring OSX environment... and yes it wakes up faster when I open the lid.
Really found this article useful thanks. It feels like there are often aspects of each of those models - makes me think of many different startup companies.