

Increasing battery life in linux - pranavk
http://pranavk.github.com/linux/power-saving-and-increasing-battery-backup-in-linux/

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qznc
Within Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives you should do

    
    
        sudo aptitude install laptop-mode-tools
    

This basically does a lot of minor tweaks, like disabling finger print readers
etc.

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orangethirty
Slight correction for the lazy who just copy/paste commands.

    
    
        sudo apt-get install laptop-mode-tools
    
    

Thanks for the tip.

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tene
The original command, as written, works fine. Aptitude does have an
interactive mode, but when run with arguments like that, will behave
approximately the same as apt-get would. Aptitude acts as a frontend to
several of the slightly-lower-level apt tools.

~~~
loevborg
Aptitude is no longer pre-installed in current versions of Ubuntu (and
Debian). Also, aptitude used to be recommended over apt-get because its
handling of dependencies was superior and because it made it easier to find
"orphan" packages. As I understand it, apt-get has since caught up with
aptitude and is nowadays the preferred command-line tool.

~~~
YokoZar
More importantly, aptitude is known to be broken. Aptitude's resolver never
caught up with Ubuntu's multiarch transition, and will erroneously conclude
that many things are uninstallable (or attempt to "fix" things by uninstalling
half the system)

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eeperson
It looks like this has since been fixed:

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/aptitude/+bug/8317...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/aptitude/+bug/831768)

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lampe
the title should be "Increasing battery life in linux with a nvidia GPU"

I got a Ivy Bridge Zenbook and i can get up to 7 hours battery life thie is
even better like windows.

i use powertop to reach this.

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zobzu
This. Another misleading "generic title" for a case that just happens to be
his laptop/setup.

i've a similar experience with my ivy bridge laptop. I also check with
powertop whenever something looks odd, but by default, all the things were
rather fine (i run Arch)

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koyote
Wouldn't using bumblebee do exactly what this article describes, but
automatically and with the advantage of using the nvidia GPU for specific
applications?

At least that's what I've been using for over a year now.

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pranavk
I used that but it failed for me for some reason or other. So i tried it, its
also nice piece of code that worked nicely for me. Doubled the battery by more
than 100%

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colanderman
Intel's PowerTOP helps track down power usage more generally:
<https://01.org/powertop/>

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albertzeyer
Btw., does anyone knows if there is some similar tool for iOS? (Doesn't matter
if I need root access...)

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ernesth
Isn't this only for laptops with dual GPU (optimus setup). In which case, I
guess the only "other OS" is windows that is (was) the only one able to switch
on the fly which graphics chip is to be used.

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pranavk
yup, right.

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tsahyt
I'm running on a Fedora install with very customized front end here (basically
ditched everything and built from scratch) which is very easy on the resources
(about 330Mb of RAM usage after boot) and I'm getting between 2 and 3 hours of
battery life. I've done nothing power management related though.

Windows on the other hand sucks the whole battery up in 2 hours tops. Still,
I'd be very much interested in increasing my battery life. This is the only
thing holding me back from doing serious coding outside.

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chimeracoder
This is the one thing which depends very much on the hardware you're running,
but as the post notes, turning of the GPU can very helpful, and you won't
notice the difference in most usage (which may even be everything you do).

I was able to do this in the BIOS, which is actually the easiest way to do it
(if your computer supports it).

The other thing is scaling the fan down[1] - as long as you don't go overboard
with it, it's perfectly safe, and a _huge_ impact on battery life.

Finally, turn off your wireless card and/or Bluetooth if you're not using
them. Many computers enable Bluetooth by default, but since most people don't
use them, it's a needless battery suck.

[1] The other thing is scaling the fan down - this

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chimeracoder
Copy and pasted wrong - this is the link:
<https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fan_Speed_Control>

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Nux
Self-promotion time:
[http://www.nux.ro/archive/2012/10/EL6_power_usage_optimisati...](http://www.nux.ro/archive/2012/10/EL6_power_usage_optimisation_on_Intel_Sandy___Ivy_Bridge.html)

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sbinetd
There was a more general stackexchange question dealing with this. Actually,
there are probably a few - but this is recent enough to warrant reading.

[http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/17858/how-can-i-
impr...](http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/17858/how-can-i-improve-
battery-life-in-fedora-15/)

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agumonkey
for low-level lovers
<http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/swsusp/8hours.pdf>

from the suggestions of
[http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_reduce_power_consumptio...](http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_reduce_power_consumption)

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donniezazen
There is no _/proc/acpi/battery/_ in my system. I do have acpi installed.

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chimeracoder
Do you have an NVIDIA GPU?

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donniezazen
Yes, I have an Intel HD 3000 and Nvidia NVS 4200. I use bumblebee and bbswitch
to handle dedicated GPU.

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kierank
I guess that explains why the fan is permanently on in Linux on my XPS L502x.

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KirinDave
Doesn't this absolutely freak out X11?

