There's been a lot of talk in the last couple weeks about the significant negative impact that Windows Vista will have on the environment. Almost 100% of this negative impact is the waste that it will generate by making millions of machines obsolete.
The question becomes...would machines go obsolete as quickly if software people weren't coming out with fancy, but largely similar, operating systems all the time? The answer has been given to us by Linux: Yes...but not nearly as quickly.
Linux Could Prevent Use of 4,200,000,000 kg of Fossil Fuels a Year.