Increasing battery life in linux

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

by pranavk • 14 years ago

50 34 14 years ago

pranavk.github.com

lampe• 14 years ago

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.

zobzu• 14 years ago

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)

pranavk3• 14 years ago

I agree, I must change the title soon.

donniezazen2• 14 years ago

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

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

Do you have an NVIDIA GPU?

donniezazen2• 14 years ago

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

Pfiffer• 14 years ago

/proc/acpi is deprecated in favor of /sys. See here: http://cateee.net/lkddb/web-lkddb/ACPI_PROCFS_POWER.html

koyote• 14 years ago

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.

pranavk3• 14 years ago

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%

ernesth• 14 years ago

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.

pranavk3• 14 years ago

yup, right.

qznc• 14 years ago

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.

orangethirty2• 14 years ago

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

    sudo apt-get install laptop-mode-tools

Thanks for the tip.

tene• 14 years ago

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.

tsahyt2• 14 years ago

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.

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

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

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

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

zanny2• 14 years ago

I have a transformer infinity I unlocked, have an ssh client on, and have the keyboard dock. It even has a USB port I could plug in a more ergonomic keyboard if I wanted.

I get around ~12 hours battery life on it just doing networking / terminal stuff, and I can just work on files on my desktop and compile / test there.

tsahyt2• 14 years ago

I wonder why tablets like the Transformer has such a good battery life. Are x86 processors such power hogs?

jae_1003• 14 years ago

may i ask what ssh client application you are using?

kierank• 14 years ago

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

KirinDave• 14 years ago

Doesn't this absolutely freak out X11?

colanderman• 14 years ago

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

albertzeyer• 14 years ago

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

Nux• 14 years ago

Self-promotion time: http://www.nux.ro/archive/2012/10/EL6_power_usage_optimisati...

sbinetd• 14 years ago

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...

agumonkey• 14 years ago

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...

Increasing battery life in linux

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