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We've come a long way since March 2003. That was when Paul Otellini of Intel (then COO, now CEO) was on stage at PC Forum, promoting the chip giant's new Centrino brand. I was the first questioner, and I pressed him to stop dragging the company's feet on Linux issues, especially device drivers. His response was not encouraging.

Now, almost five years later, a Google search for Linux Intel device drivers brings up more than six million results. Today Intel pushes Linux as much as Linux pushes Intel. A good example of the former is LessWatts.org, a new community launched by Intel to improve power management on Linux.

Says the index page, "LessWatts.org is not about marketing, trying to sell you something or comparing one vendor to another. LessWatts.org is about how you can save real watts, however you use Linux on your computer or computers."

Among the projects featured are the PowerTOP toolkit, "tickless idle", Power Policy Manager, BLTK (Linux Battery Life Toolkit), display and graphics power saving, device and bus power management, and so on. It's also part of Intel's Climate Savers inititiative (at climatesaverscomputing.org).

Involvement is invited. Visit lesswats.org to find out more.

- Doc Searls