General :: Optimizing Laptop Battery Life (Saving Power Consumption)
Apr 20, 2010
So I've come across several tips to optimize battery life on Linux. [URLs]. In addition to undervolting, I would like to underclock. Is there a way to control CPU speed outside of the BIOS via some software control in Linux... or some sort of boot manager? I would like to boot to linux using underclocked speeds and have Windows running full blast. Is there a way to run Linux completely in RAM? I have read that saves on power consumption from the hard drive.
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Mar 2, 2010
getting back to our laptop, the stability window is ~3.2V. Meaning that when you operate the battery above this the electrolyte is oxidized on the positive electrode and reduced on the negative electrode. Remember that we only want to oxidize and reduce the active materials and don't want to do anything else. All these reactions other than the ones we want are called side reactions and these are really bad for the battery. The nominal voltage of a laptop battery is 3.7 V which means that something bad wants to happen as we use the battery.So long story short, stuff (e.g., passive layers and poor kinetics of reactions) happens and things are not as bad as they seem and you can increase the voltage up to 4.2V without bad things really happening. All chargers for Li-ion cells today cut the battery off when it reaches 4.2V. What you have to realize is that at 4.2V, these side reactions are present in finite amounts and start to chemically kill the battery, but its not that dramatic.
Operating to 4.1V makes things better and extends the life, 4.0 V is even better and so on. So why don't battery manufacturers cut the voltage off at, say, 4 V to get better battery life? Because every time you cut this voltage down you decrease the capacity of the battery and its run time. The 4.2V cutoff is a compromise between good run time and decent (read "not pathetic) life.On the other hand, if you charge the battery and then pull the plug (so to speak), the battery discharges some, the voltage drops, and these reactions become less of a problem and your battery life goes up. So the best things you can do is to charge the laptop (or cell phone, camera etc.) and once its charged, pull the plug. Your battery will thank you for it.As a matter of fact, if you own a Lenovo Thinkpad, you can actually change the state of charge to which you charge the battery using the Battery Maintenance utility. You can change this from charging to 100% state (where the voltage is 4.2V) to 90% so that your voltage is less. You lose some energy is doing that, but atleast you can change it to 100% when you need battery power and put it back down to 90% when you can plug in. I wish my Mac has the same feature.
I typically use the battery for a while (say 1/2 hour to 1 hour), then plug it in and wait to fully charge it, then I pull the plug and use it again for 1/2 hour to 1h and then I repeat this. Takes some getting used to and I forget to do this, but I try.
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Jun 2, 2011
I just upgraded to f15 x86_64. I use a VPCCEB3Z1E vaio laptop and I noticed that my laptop can't last more than half past an hour running from battery in wireless productivity (just surfing the net and make some word processing, so nothing so heavy...) I use kde 4, installed cpupowerutils (replacement for cpufrequtils), put the modules acpi_cpufreq, cpufreq-ondemand -powersave and the other governors in /etc/rc.d/rc.local for loading them at boot. Edited profiles in powerdevil (every profile has cpupowerutils freq-set -g and the name of a governor) but i still notice no changes. How I can get a better power management on this laptop? Fan still runs at high speed.
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Feb 24, 2011
So I've been using Ubuntu on a Toshiba L645d, and after a few hiccups with the sound and wireless, it's finally working well now. However, the battery is still a bit less when compared to Windows 7 (2:00 vs 2:35, but it came with optimizations on W7 so that might be the reason. A comparison of power used: 25w of power on Ubuntu vs 17.5 on W7.
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Jun 1, 2011
I've got a problem with my laptop and I finally decided to try to solve it. My computer sometimes (not everytime) freezes. It's just when I'm using battery power. I figured out that this is not connected with some specific action (e.g. some app crash), it can freeze 1 minute after start or 10 minutes, I think it's random. I've checked my /var/log/messages.log file and these are the last messages before freeze (exactly at 9:16:15):
Code:
Jun 1 07:16:09 localhost rtkit-daemon[2170]: Successfully made thread 3472 of process 3472 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '120' high priori$
Jun 1 07:16:09 localhost rtkit-daemon[2170]: Successfully made thread 3473 of process 3472 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '120' RT at prior$
Jun 1 07:16:09 localhost rtkit-daemon[2170]: Successfully made thread 3474 of process 3472 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '120' RT at prior$
Jun 1 07:16:09 localhost rtkit-daemon[2170]: Successfully made thread 3475 of process 3472 (/usr/bin/pulseaudio) owned by '120' RT at prior$
Jun 1 09:16:09 localhost gdm-simple-greeter[3481]: Gtk-WARNING: gtkwidget.c:6794: widget not within a GtkWindow
Jun 1 09:16:09 localhost gdm-simple-greeter[3481]: WARNING: Unable to read from file /etc/arch-release
Jun 1 09:16:09 localhost gdm-simple-greeter[3481]: Gtk-WARNING: gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -47 and h$
Jun 1 09:16:11 localhost logger: ACPI action undefined: BAT1
I'm using Arch Linux x64, Gnome Shell and have the newest updates.
What's wrong with my laptop? Where should I look for errors?
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Feb 1, 2010
Any programs out there I can get to show this on my laptop please? I've searched this forum for "laptop" and "power", but threads are going on about increasing battery life and not actually showing how much battery is left on the machine.
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Jun 17, 2015
Since according to liquorix.net the kernel
Code: Select alluname -a
Linux t 4.0-5.dmz.3-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Debian 4.0-12 (2015-06-14) x86_64 GNU/Linux
incorporates Zen Interactive Tuning and this
[URL] .... wrote:Tunes the kernel for responsiveness at the cost of throughput and power usage.
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Nov 14, 2010
I've been using Ubuntu for the past four years, but I recently bought a Dell Mini 1012, and while Ubuntu 10.04 is wonderful in every way, it is giving me quite poor results in terms of battery life, compared to Windows 7 which is also installed on the device. I have been able to get 4.5 hours out of Ubuntu,compared to the 8 hours I have been able to get with Windows 7 Starter. I have tried everything suggested here in order to get better battery life out of Ubuntu, but without success.I'm wondering if I might have better success with another distribution.Are there any Linux distributions available that can claim longer battery life than others, on netbooks and in general? This question can be answered objectively if it is backed up with hard data from based on benchmarks,
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Jul 6, 2011
i recently purchased my second laptop, primarily for linux. When i chose it, my main concern was battery life. Just to make a side note. When i say battery life, i mean how long the computer takes until the battery goes flat. Not how many years/ect it takes till the battery will no longer hold charge.
My new computer claims to be able to get 10 hours. Although it's a bit off, i get a satisfying little bit over 6 hours, from full charge. This is running Windows 7. I couldn't wait to put Linux on my new computer, i have, but it just isn't satisfying because i only get about 4 hours while running linux, tried three different distros, and all roughly the same.
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May 18, 2011
my SheevaPlug just died, and I need to look for new device to replace it. My goal is to build a fanless, low power consumption, linux server. Currently I am thinking of purchasing a QNAP NAS device (TS-110 model) and installing Debian on it.
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Aug 3, 2011
I am working on a traffic surveillance project which performs various image processing tasks with a number of visual sensors and a computing platform. My basic task in the project is the power optimization/management. I am using a ZOTAC-IONITX computing platform (Intel ATOM CPU + NVIDIA ION GPU). The problems that I am currently facing are:
I am unable to model the power consumption of various components e.g., processor, GPU, hard drive, memory etc, since there seems to be no way to measure the power consumption of individual system components. Since I don't have a power consumption model, I cannot come up with a power optimization algorithm. I am currently working on Linux. Is there any way to measure/model the power consumption of individual system component?
I have already checked powertop. It doesn't tells the power (watts) consumed by a component (e.g., microprocessor). It just gives information about the power state the processor is in (However there is no way to change the power state by the user) and the processors that cause processor to wakeup.
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Aug 31, 2010
I have a 3 year old laptop with the original battery and its drained pretty bad. The "Battery may be broken" popup was driving me insane and this is how you disable it, in case you are in the same situation as me. Open terminal
Code:
gconf-editor
Drill down to...
apps --> gnome-power-manager --> notify
uncheck the low_capacity checkbox. This should disable the popup for you if your battery has little life left in it. Now, if any knows how to disable the Avahi popup, let me know.
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Sep 5, 2010
The fan noise caused by my HP envy 15 when I'm using OpenSuse 11.3. When the computer is under W7 there is almost no fan noise. In OpenSuse, however, every three or two minutes the fan goes very loud. It sounds as if the machine were doing hard processing work when it is just surfing and doing office stuff.
Another issue is the battery consumption, I already tried the power option but the under OpenSuse the machine eats the battery in almost half of the time than under W7. it stands for just one hour under OpenSuse, when it uses two in W7. These machine comes with a core i7 and an ATI graphic card.
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Apr 20, 2011
I was going through the article given here :- [URL]. Now my question is how to do this in linux ?
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Feb 23, 2010
Is Ubunutu better than Windows 7 for general battery life?
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May 12, 2010
So, I never got great battery life with 9.04 or 9.10, but it was acceptable. Here's the thing, with Windows 7 I can get about two hours. With Ubuntu I'm lucky if I get an hour, and I mean really lucky. I have selected to dim the brightness and to spin down the HDD when possible, it hasn't helped a whole lot. What I don't see is an option to underclock the CPU, which is done rather easily in Kubuntu.
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Apr 30, 2010
Installed Lucid netbook-remix on my Aspire One with SSD and 3 cell battery last night. Under 9.10 I got 2hr 15mins with wifi and up to 3hr without wifi. This morning on the train to work I booted the new release only to find that without wifi I'm now getting only 1hr 20mins battery life (fully charged battery). I have the brightness turned down low to try and save a little power but it makes no difference. What can I do. As this is a netbook-remix release having just over an hour of battery life is plain awful and impractical.Any suggestions to increase battery life?
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Mar 3, 2011
I've used an older version of ubuntu before, when it was brown and orange. I ran it off of a 8 gb solid state express card. Used it for about a month, didn't like it because I didn't know how to install anything and because it was slow (because ran off of a express card). Now, I'm looking to try ubuntu 10.10 on a partition of a main hard drive, specifically on the chrome os laptop when it comes out.
Now, I've read up that the battery life for ubuntu is mysteriously worse than on what would run a mac or a windows. This battery life issue is driving me away from ubuntu. How much battery life would I actually get for ubuntu if my battery life lasts 4 hours running a windows 7? And how much hard drive space do I need to partition to install ubuntu?
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Jul 22, 2010
The topic of this thread says it all.
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Apr 1, 2010
I have a Samsung R510 laptop, with a short-life battery (holds up to 1.5 hours) Is there any way to make my laptop work longer by using some tweaks? Maybe it is possible to change the CPU according to the load?
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Jan 8, 2011
I bought a dell mini 10v last spring and I have always gotten around 2-2.5 hrs max battery life. Is that all this 3-cell can pull off?
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Feb 4, 2011
I currently use windows 7 on my laptop which gives me on average on 2 hours of battery life. If replace windows with ubuntu, would it allow more battery life time? I am a student, and I always have battery life issue when I work at uni.
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Jun 29, 2011
According to Phoronix [URL]... aspm&num=1 (which seems to only test Ubuntu kernels) the problems should affect all users of the affected kernels, including Debian's, but that article provides a fix. I don't remember anyone here mentioning lower battery life and increased heat on their mobile platforms, though.
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Mar 21, 2010
I'm very curious about something. I like to use my command line as much as possible. So, most of my work and usage of my computer revolves around the command line. In such a case I could work without having to use any graphical interfaces. My only current limitation is WLAN connection isn't working for me, but that belongs in another thread and something for me to do for now.
My question is, Is it worth it in terms of battery life to work in level 3 when running a laptop on a batter? What sort of extension to the life would one expect?
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Jan 7, 2011
I have installed a new PC system
- OpenSuSE 11.3, 64bit
- AMD Phenomen II X4
- ASUS M4A88TD-V Evo/USB3
- 3 hard disks
- etc.
After start-up with runlevel 3, no applications running, network is up, the overall power consumption of the PC (without monitor) is ca. 70 Watt. After some minutes the monitor goes to power saving (terminal mode, runlevel 3 !), but the power consumption rises to 120 Watt! After pressing a key on the keyboard (e.g. Num) the monitor leaves the power save mode, shows the login screen, and the power consumption falls to 70 Watt. In parallel I have investigated the system via ssh and running top, but I have not observed any abnormal operation. I looked into /proc/acpi/* but I did not find something unusual.
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Feb 27, 2010
Judging by the number of responses (close to zero) to other threads about powertop on this forum, I have little hope in getting any answers. However, I do not know where else could I ask. PowerTop tell me that even after applying almost all the tips and tricks from lesswatts.org, my laptop still consumes over 72 Watts while idling.
Code:
< Detailed C-state information is not P-states (frequencies)
1.60 Ghz 0.0%
800 Mhz 100.0%
Wakeups-from-idle per second : 451.1 interval: 10.0s
Power usage (5 minute ACPI estimate) : 72.5 W (0.3 hours left)
Top causes for wakeups:
[Code]...
Suggestion: Enable USB autosuspend by pressing the U key or adding usbcore.autosuspend=1 to the kernel command line in the grub config This is when I am not touching the laptop. When I am surfing the web or listen to music, it goes up to 2000+ wakeups! How do I cut it further? I am getting like 20-30 minutes max on battery and this is unacceptable cause in Windows I get at least 3 times that.
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Feb 8, 2011
I'm using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on my HP ProBook 4510s.[URL]... On Windows XP, the battery usually lasts me over 4 hours but on Ubuntu it barely last 2 hours. How can I reduce power consumption and prolong battery life while running Ubuntu on my laptop?
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Jul 5, 2011
What my situation was before the problems:
-I dualboot win(xp) and xubuntu(11.04)
-No problems whatsoever except for the fact that power consumption was higher on xubuntu.
Then i read something that said that the kernel i was using was effectively having power issues and that it could be fixed so in went into the terminal and nano'd the grub config file and update-grub'd with the addition i had read all over the internet. When i rebooted it seemingly had worked but once i opened a ..... video it didn't react to anything (i'm 99% sure kernel panic since there was no hdd movement). So i forced it to shutdown and when i got back in again i nano'd the file again but for some reason i didn't only remove the power stuff but I also removed the quiet splash. Once i had rebooted it would suddenly ask for username and password twice.
once the older looking menu an then the newer looking one with the fancy bg). The first time i got in okay but afterwards i could only get in as root. I thought i had simply forgotten my password but i ran passwd myusername as root and it didn't work(only when i typed something random it gave the wrong password message). As root i also can't edit the users and groups(when i open it it stays grayed out). how do i fix this. If i will lose my account anyways then how do i get my files/bookmarks/... of of it.
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Mar 3, 2010
I've decided to format my netbook entirely and just run NBR. I still need a windows install because a lot of stuff still doesn't work correctly in wine.
will running a virtual windows install kill mu netbooks battery life quickly or is it the same as running any other program? also what's a good virtual OS program? I think the only one I know of it vmware or something?
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Jun 16, 2010
My battery life in Ubuntu is much less than that of Windows 7. I am trying to find ways to improve my battery life in Ubuntu. One thing that I notice is that my CPU (Intel Core i7 on a Lenovo Thinkpad W510) always runs at 55 degrees Celsius or even higher. my GPU right now reads 51. Seems pretty toasty to me, but not too over the top. Is it abnormal to have this as an average temperature? (since writing, it has risen to 57. I am on AC power, listening to music with Rhythmbox and browsing the web in Google Chrome.)
My cpu mode is set to 'ondemand', and I think this is a good option to balance power and speed. I am wondering if there is a similar function for the gpu. In my Nvidia settings my "PowerMizer" preferred mode is set to adaptive. Is that essentially all the improvement I'm going to get? In windows it seems like the amount of heat coming from the fan corresponds to running cpu/gpu intensive programs. When I'm not doing much, the exhaust is not as hot. In Ubuntu 10.04, the stream of heat is relatively constant. It does increase with more use, but it seems that the base temperature is higher.
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