HT: Get better battery life on your linux laptop


Recommended Posts

There are a few tweaks and tips available to get better battery life out of your linux notebook.

to measure, i have installed powerstat, which is a simple tool to calculate your power consumption.

 

you can get it via:

sudo apt-get install powerstat

give it a go and check the numbers:

here is what my result looked like:

 

pwr1.jpg

 

average is about ca. 12,5

 

to improve power consumption it is suggested to install TLP

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw

then enter in the Konsole:

sudo tlp start

tlp is now running.

 

running another powerstat test, the average power consumption should be reduced.

 

my results:

pwr2.jpg

 

average is about 11,6

 

 

switching from free radeon driver to fglrx (or to the appropriate nvidia driver which might be in your case). do this in the hardware settings of your system-control panel.

 

running another powerstat test i now got the following:

 

pwr3.jpg

 

average is 8,x

 

 

i have yet to try and see how much longer my notebook now runs on battery but apparently these few tweaks gain you between 10 and 15% of battery.

 

done with snapshot-linux 0.4 which is basically kubuntu 14.04. these tweaks should work with any *buntu based distro.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

tlp makes worlds of difference with older hardware (e.g. my Core 2 Duo HP Laptop).

 

If you're stuggling to save more battery life / be more environmentally conscious, then look at lowering your IGPU clockspeeds when you don't need it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.