Distro best for battery life/ Windows 7 comparison

Hi.

Is there any study showing that any distro (Ubuntu preferred) has better battery life than Windows 7? Anybody experience longer battery life with Linux?

Thanks!

 

Short answer: NO.

Long answer: Keep an eye on WattOS. It's an ubuntu-based project that looks to improve power management. Right now development has stalled but it should pick up again after Ubuntu 10.04 is released.

 

http://www.google.com/search?q=ubuntu+battery+life+compared+to+windows

 

My laptop, HP dv4 1435dx, made optimized for Win 7 has the below battery life when doing light tasks like reading ebooks, surfing webs:

-Win 7 Home Premium: normal effect,with aero n stuff : ~2h
-Win 7: tweaked, zero effect, cpu set to 25% max in power management etc : ~2h30m

-ubuntu 10.10: normal, right after installed: ~2h
-ubuntu 10: tweaked, disabling not used stuff: ~2h30
-ubuntu 10: tweaked even further, changing it root's power n drivers management (all thanks to lesswatt.com ): ~3h !

And u wont believe this. after doing everything i know, dimming display to lowest to read ebooks in the dark etc, it can last ab 3h30 - 3h45 !!! And i couldnt get win7 to reach 3h no matter what i do.

In Win7, there's really not that many changes u can make. maybe there're ways which i dont know or haven't heard off, but that's to say, i've been using MS Windows since its 95 versions,but a newbie in Linux n I've been using ubunto less than 2 weeks. My battery wear is ab 10%. It's a no contest. Ubuntu hands down. It's even faster and lighter too!

 

Yep don't forget under linux we get full control over hardware parts (on/off/power state/level), can tweak anything .. or compile new drivers and add patches to the source first.

 

No distro is going to be better then another for battery life. I can say that I have gotten down to 8.6w in ubuntu, but I could do the same in debian or centos or fedore or slackware I'm 100% sure.

 

Is there a guide to these advanced power tweaks?

 

I've tried uBuntu and Mint and lets face it... All Linux distros consume so much battery power that it's redicilous. I was on the forums talking to dev's about the issue because it seemed like my battery went from being 85% ok to being 33% ok after having 2 weeks of uBuntu installed... They told me that they knew about issues with batteries and the life of being able to run a system on one. The best advice I got was just to wait for a fix, so I uninstalled.

 

What?

 

He he .. typical case why 99% of users shouldn't touch linux

 

8hours and 5 mins with screen dimmed to lowest on Ubuntu 10.10 Unity 2D QT on netbook in sig. Windws 7 was about 2 hours less with roughly the same tweaks and such.

 

This is my U20A with the stock 6 cell battery, with On-Demand CPU governor. Intel CULV SU7300, 4GB RAM, Debian Sid AMD64 with 2.6.37.3. 10 hours estimated.

If I use the 9 cell I can easily get ~13hrs estimated which ends up more like 9 in reality.

 

Lots of good things for battery life. Play with cpufreq, laptop-mode-tools, and powertop.

Also, great ArchWiki page(I use Arch).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop

 

I dont know about you but I can get my wattage usage lower then I can in windows and the computer is alot more functional in linux too. With windows at ~9w the performance isnt very good but at 8.6w in linux I can ssh and web surf with ease.

In linux I get 8+ hours, in a semi crippled windows I get 7+.

I dont think its that, rather if someone doesnt know much about linux they should ask how to fix the problem instead of bashing an OS for spite.

 

Just to be clear on one thing I'm not bashing Linux for anything. Linux is one of the most helpful and intuitive operating systems to ever bless the I.T. culture.

If my laptop dies, I just pop in a pendrive linux and fix whatever the problem is. With Linux you always have 'another option'.

It's just not good for battery life, or maybe more to the point. I didn't know how to change my wattage, or maybe my battery was dead. Point is, I'll never take the AC plug out ever again

P.S. 7 hours battery life is mental btw.

 

You are so insightful in all of your posts, Zep. Please keep up the good work.

 

Like I stated in my previous post I get better wattage management under a full version of linux (wont name the distro as its inconsequential) and that is without doing much tweaking. Going through and crippling my t400 completely with power manager I can get around 9w in windows 7, but it cycles up higher when actually working to 10w+ while I average less with linux.

 

Love powertop for my intel laptop.

 

By 'disabling not used stuff', are you referring to powertop? AFAIK, in 10.10 there's no device manager equivalent that allows disabling of the ethernet or the optical drive. Do you have any links or instructions for what you've done? Seems like you've had very good success!

Using wifi, I get about the same battery life as with Vista, without wifi and watching movies is a bit more.