(K)ubuntu @ Asus Eee PC 1001HA - request for advise.

[Mark Greenwood]

On Saturday 06 Feb 2010 15:12:04 Dotan Cohen wrote:
> >> ... Moblin 2.1, which gets me back my lost hour - so Linux *can* do it....
> > Are you aiming at the distro from this website: http://moblin.org/    ?
> >
> > Dotan and others: is this battery issue a point of attention in the
> > further development of Kubuntu netbook remix?
> >
> 
> Hi Bas. It is common to see battery usage differences between Linux
> and Windows. In the past it was usually to Linux's advantage, however,
> with the advent of Composting window managers in Linux now Windows
> often gets the better battery life. Using a composting windows manager
> in Windows can will reduce it's battery life to closer to Linux's, and
> disabling composing can increase Linux's battery life. There are other
> tips as well, including lowering screen brightness, disabling
> wifi/bluetooth, and others (just google it). The powertop application
> can help the user figure out where his battery life is going.

That's all true, (although in 5 years I have never had a system with more battery life under Linux when compared to Windows XP) but some of the biggest battery killers I've found have been KDE applications such as Kopete and KMail. While they are running that battery drains extremely fast. Switching off compositing did not have as big an effect as exiting Kopete. Why this is I have no idea, it's simply what I found in my empirical research. Running powertop on Kubuntu 9.10 I can see about 150 wakueps-per-second from an hrtimer process, which disappears when I exit Kopete.

Mark

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