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Thread: Laptop Linux

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Beans
    5

    Laptop Linux

    Hi all. I am looking for info on Ubuntu power usage. Upon purchasing my laptop it was pre-loaded with "That that shall not be spoken of," but it did last longer on one full battery that Ubuntu-Gnome, not sure which version.

    Does anyone know if a particular window manager would prove better for laptop battery time?

    Perhaps there is a guide to turning off non-essential services to save CPU cycles and saving Battery time?

    I have all desktop effects compiz etc. turned off and I don't want to loose any functionality to wireless network detection/connection, web browsing or multimedia.

    Thanks for any replies.

    Laptop - HP nc6320
    Dual core @2.00GHz
    Memory - 1GB
    Wireless - ipw3945

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vancouver, BC
    Beans
    223
    Distro
    Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (testing)

    Re: Laptop Linux

    Install cpufreq utils if it isn't already

    Code:
    sudo aptitude install cpufrequtils
    Then run

    Code:
    cpufreq-info
    and post the output

    You can also try using powertop for diagnosing what is using all that battery power. It gives mostly info relating to processor power usage, but it also gives more general tips at the bottom for reducing power.

    Code:
    sudo aptitude install powertop
    sudo powertop
    If you post the tips it gives, I can help you make them permanent.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    $here ? $here : $there
    Beans
    3,717
    Distro
    Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

    Re: Laptop Linux

    You should also have a look at www.lesswatts.org. It contains a lot of information on improving battery life.
    Don't try to make something "fast" until you are able to quantify "slow".

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Beans
    5

    Re: Laptop Linux

    cpufreq-info gives

    Code:
    cpufrequtils 002: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2006
    Report errors and bugs to linux@brodo.de, please.
    analyzing CPU 0:
      no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU
    analyzing CPU 1:
      no or unknown cpufreq driver is active on this CPU
    any suggestions?

    powertop suggests usb wakeups, wifi radar and other stuff. That is a wicked tool. I am gonna go through them 1 by 1. It gives excellent info on cpu wake ups and remedies.

    LessWatts.org is a good site as well. To be honest I was hopin one of you might say xfce or something simple but this will keep me busy for a while.

    Thanks for your responses.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2008
    Beans
    5

    Re: Laptop Linux

    FYI, found this site whilst looking at usbcore.autosuspend=1

    http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to...er_consumption

    Some good tips.

    Cheers

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Vancouver, BC
    Beans
    223
    Distro
    Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (testing)

    Re: Laptop Linux

    It looks like you don't have a module loaded to do cpu frequency scaling. Since it looks like you have a newer processor (is it core or core2?) you could try acpi-cpufreq

    Code:
    sudo modprobe acpi-cpufreq
    You'll also want to load a governor module. "ondemand" is probably what you want.

    Code:
    sudo modprobe ondemand
    Otherwise, you could just try

    Code:
    sudo /etc/init.d/loadcpufreq start
    sudo /etc/init.d/cpufrequtils start
    This is what should get run on boot, so you'll see if things will load up correctly this way.

    Someone else may know more about wifi radar, but for the usb wakeups,

    Code:
    echo options usbcore autosuspend=1 > /etc/modprobe.d/usbcore.modprobe
    will make USB auto-suspend permanent starting the next time you load this module. Depending on your powertop version, it may not stop complaining because it really wants autosuspend=0, which is probably not necessary. The number is the number of seconds before an inactive usb port suspends.

    Are you running i386 or amd64? Especially for the latter, you want to use a kernel newer than 2.6.24 which is the first one that allows dynamic ticks (NO_HZ) for 64-bit. There is also quite a lot of other powersaving improvment in that kernel. I literally decreased my wakeups by an order of magnitude by upgrading to it on amd64.

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