Why is Gutsy so hungry for power?

[debian]

On Sat, 2008-01-05 at 21:21 +0200, Marius Gedminas wrote:
> 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

actually, i noticed that the reason ubuntu is running sluggish on your
machine is that your devices are using programs that are slowing down
your machine. I ran powertop on my machine and noticed that my video
drivers were taking up 50%. 

But ubuntu will run faster then xp (most of the time). Besides, there
are alot of optional programs that come with ubuntu that take up lots of
resources. On my machine, compiz tends to do that and i end up having to
disable it in order to play any of my games.

You might try disabling any software thats taking up too much resources
(use the system monitor to see whats taking up all the resources)

--cj