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Tips on Saving Battery Power in Linux
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 9:00 PM on January 8, 2008
Tired of having the Windows side of your dual-boot system eat up more battery power? Want to simply do the right thing and stop sucking power for unnecessary power cycles? Linux power-saving site LessWatts.org has a wealth of tips and tricks for reducing the power needs of desktop and laptop systems. Among the intuitive power-savers:
- Stepping Ethernet ports from gigabit to standard 100/10 speeds when not at the office
- Disabling unnecessary Bluetooth radios
- Turning off Wi-Fi "auto-associate" behaviors that draw power when wireless is shut off
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Hoaxe
Posted 6:06 AM 8/1/08
@volatility: sorry, it's the other way around for me, i have an HP and XP gives me like 2.5 or 3 hours where as ubuntu gives me almost 4.
Hoaxe
abhowell
Posted 5:54 AM 8/1/08
Should we be taking advice from an organization whose very name is grammatically incorrect?
(I apologize for the non sequitor. I don't have much to add on-topic, as I rarely go off the grid with my laptop.)
abhowell
volatility
Posted 5:47 AM 8/1/08
For the fastest and easiest results, I suggest running PowerTOP and doing what it recommends (if you know what you're doing, that is).
[www.linuxpowertop.org]
Still, no matter what I do with my hp pavilion dv1680, Ubuntu gets ~4.5 hrs on a charge whereas XP gets more like 5.5 hrs.
Out-of-the-box, I'd venture to guess that XP is better at the power consumption game than Ubuntu. Again, that's a strictly anecdotal opinion, definitely available for change. ;)
volatility
schoash
Posted 7:37 AM 8/1/08
I undervolted my panasonic cf-r6 and ubuntu runs longer than any windows before
schoash
idjpg85
Posted 12:07 PM 8/1/08
I have the opposite issue. Windows XP runs for about 1.5hrs and Ubuntu runs for 2.5hrs. I end up running Ubuntu more and more because of the battery life. And that is with all the bells and whistles on too.
idjpg85
longbourne
Posted 6:57 PM 8/1/08
.
OPEN QUESTIONS:
.
.
Are there tools or guides, software or online, to help me see what's sucking up battery juice?
Are there serious tests (on the level of TomsHardware or better) that measure these?
.
.
Thanks, lifehackers. These comments threads are as useful as the articles that trigger them.
longbourne
kailden
Posted 3:33 PM 10/1/08
If you have a IBM thinkpad that is supported by the Tp_smapi/hdaps driver you can get better control over when your battery charges.
For instance, you might want to let your battery cycle charging in values around 40% if you use AC a majority of the time (as it is better to store a lithium battery at 40%). This way perhaps your battery might keep the 8hrs of charge it had when you first got your laptop.
Unfortunately that doesn't get rid of the problem of the heat coming off your laptop hurting your battery, so perhaps it is better to take it off when you are on AC if you have that option.
kailden