Why is Gutsy so hungry for power?

[Marius Gedminas]

On Thu, Jan 03, 2008 at 08:28:29AM -0800, John Leonard wrote:
> I have read a number of articles in which the power
> consumption of various OSs running on a standard PC or
> laptop are compared (eg
> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...item=880&num=2

The correct URL is
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=880&num=2

> ). Sad to say Ubuntu generally does poorly in
> comparison with XP as well as other linux desktops. I
> have been unable to find out why it is so hungry for
> power, but the sooner it is sorted, or tools provided
> to allow the average user to tweak their system to
> reduce the wattage the better.

You know about powertop, right?  http://www.lesswatts.org is also
instructive.

> As well as issues with laptop battery life
> (particularly with Gutsy see
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=600810 ), the
> prevailing interest in green computing as well as the
> general open source ethos means Ubuntu is really
> missing a trick if this is not improved. It will not
> be too long before the wolves are at the door.
> 
> Does anyone know why Gutsy uses more power than Feisty
> and how consumption can be reduced?

I think the correct question to ask would be "why Gutsy uses more power
than Feisty on that particular hardware", and I would like to know the
answer as well.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
If you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting you write software in
Lisp, you could try telling him it's XML.
                -- http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
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