Would Ubuntu drain more battery?

Hi, I have Ubuntu for desktop, so there's no battery issue. I am concerned about installing it on a laptop because I am not sure if there are ways like in Vista to reduce performance to increase battery life. Is this such a function?

Thanks

 

I'm going to guess that for now, at least, it would drain more battery power... Intel is nice to Open Source so maybe I'm a little out dated (provided the box is Intel; not sure how AMD fares) on this notion, but the UBubtu devs have to code and add enhanced power management stuff to take advantage of the latest power reducers in laptops...

You didn't say which laptop you had though so depends on its age Ububtu could be quite optimized for it

 

Most likely than not. Understand Vista, my notebook spend most of its time in C3 state yet there is a powertop utility(incidentally by Intel linux team) which is used to locate offending programs to keep the CPU from this mode(and there are a lot).

So from a power management perspective, Vista/XP and Windows application in general is in a much better shape.

 

When I installed Ubuntu I was wondering the same question.
I gave it a shot and I have to tell you that there's no difference in battery performance when usuing Ubuntu.
However I was concerned for actually managing the power management and checked trough the Ubuntu's forums and found out that it comes Included with Ubuntu 7.04 , its automatic depending on applications you're running.

Im currently Using dual boot Vista & Ubuntu. I run Vista only when I need AutoCad, Photoshop and Video Editting Programs.
Most of the time when surfing, watching movies and listen music its Ubuntu.
tested on e1405 Core Duo / 1GB / 100GB / GMA950 / Intel 3945

 

That is the point. If you go over to the powertop mailing list, you would find a lot of discussion about offending applications which being written for *nix use all sorts of polling that prevents(or frequently wake up) the CPU from deep sleep state, as there is no one right way for doing this kind of event driven thing.

On the contrary, most applications on Windows use one single method for this kind of thing(Windows programming is even driven by nature) which plays nicely with dynamic CPU scaling.

 

However I noticed there's actually good power management in Kubuntu, allowing you to choose High Performance or Battery Save, since its automatic in Ubuntu I didnt test it in K*.
But its still very good, I expected very crappy and poor OS, so when installed I just love it. Cant find out why Linux is not so popular and why Notebook Companies doesnt offer it, like HP.

 

It has nothing to do with the feature but how many offending applications you may want to use. As I said, if you want to know more, search powertop and read.

If you find it to be good, that means it meets you need but in general, linux so far still doesn't play nice with speedstep, which is the sole reason why Intel's team introduce powertop, to spot those naughty programs.

 

umm every notebook i tried ubuntu tend to have less battery life than vista. Of course, xp have the best battery life. However, Ubuntu is always faster than vista and xp.

 

From my experiences with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Mandriva, Linux consumes just as much power, not more; the thing is that, with the exception of Ubuntu, you will often have to work to get things like speedstep working.

 

...how would vista consume less battery than linux... its not going to happen. Vista consumes much more power than linux, even in battery saving mode.

so, i say get ubuntu on there to save battery. I know i have fedora on mine and i get upward of 30min+ extra battery life than in vista (vista i get like 1:20-1:30 and fedora gets me 2-2:10hours) i would say by the ratio im getting, that linux consumes far less battery power.

this could all depend on the hardware you are using though, so if i were you i would test it out

 

Frittersman, are you running Aero?

 

Depends on how you use them. Disable the useless background tasks and/or gadgets and leave your HD/CPU alone, you can save a lot of power. My standard usage net me about 3:15 on my crippled Samsung 6-cell(48Wah instead of 56) under Vista. And that is also the best I can get under linux, I don't have any of those useless gadgets on the desktop, in either case. Oh, and have flash plugin disabled too.

 

well, i guess i should make the point that i havent tried to get windows battery efficient , all i did was switch to battery saving mode. And yes i am using aero.

maybe ill try again and get back to you.

 

Is there a good program to watch the cpu throttle in the background? Something like cpu-z?

 

well, i know for fedora there is a "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor" you can add to the panels to watch your cpu throttle.

 

At least in Ubuntu 7.04 I knoticed theres gadets for your bar that support cup underclocking, screen brightness. Probably find better ones in Synaptic Package Installer but I couldent test being on my desktop. I'm going to be installing Ubuntu (Or mabe Gentoo [both debian based I beleave]) on my NP9261. I'll post as soon as I find out on that one. Though the change will probably be dramatic as if I shut 1,2, or 3 cores off there's going to be a big increse in time. Also it's running the 8700m and I'm pritty shure that those pull less power than the 7900*** but I'm not certian on that as I realy dont care, I'll ushualy be somewhere near power (hopefully). Though you'll probably see a big increse in performace if you recompile the kernel for your PC. I know I got a 12 or 17 second boot time increse on my P4 3.2GHz HT desktop!!! Which could be extreamly usefull for a laptop if you turn it on and off alot. I realy cant imagne it being worse than vista with Aero. Unless your runing every possible thing in Compiz-Fusion or something.

 

I found that XP gave me the best battery life, followed by Ubuntu, then finally Vista. But, on my Inspiron 6400, the differences were not enough for me to worry about (Vista had 30 mins less than XP).

Of course, I do have 8 hour battery life with Arch Linux now, but that's because I don't run a GUI.

 

Gentoo is not based on Debian. It's a "metadistribution". Personally I think that battery life depends on you. I'm more than sure that linux gives you more battery life than windows. It's just a matter of configuring it right. Take a look at this HOWTO. It's a bit outdated I think...

 

My bad. I never got past compiling the kernel in VMWare so I never realy got into. I gave up after my power died and I didn't want to start it again. I'll install Ubuntu till I get it running on my needs a power supply crap HP Desktop.

Also thanks for the link. That'll come in handy.

 

Gutsy Gibbon, the Ubuntu release that is due next week is suppose to have much better power management.
Quote from the Ubuntu Site:
"Ubuntu includes the latest Linux kernel, featuring dynticks. It allows the processor to use less power and produce less heat. For laptops this means more battery life and burn-free laps and for desktops and media center PCs, a quieter, cooler environment."

I'm looking forward to that. I've already heard people claiming some decent battery life gains with the beta.