Linux Mint Forums

I'm getting 40-60 mins on a 100% charge on my Mint 14. On windows I easily get 2-3 hours minimum. I'm on an HP 6121tx laptop.

I tried to install Jupiter and switched to Power Saving mode, but it had no effect.
The 'aticonfig --pxl' command shows this: So my discrete GPU is not active and isn't the culprit.

Please help me debug this, I need at least 90 minutes of battery for this installation to make any sense.

I too, have noticed this. Did you ever figure out what was wrong with it? My battery seems to drain a whole lot faster with Linux MInt 14, than with WIndows 7.

I'm with you also. I'm clueless on how to fix. Let me know if you folks find a fix.

Also experiencing very poor battery life with LM14 Mate.
Seriously considering dumping it altogether.
So sad...

ve7oko wrote:Also experiencing very poor battery life with LM14 Mate.
Seriously considering dumping it altogether.
So sad...

I'm also experiencing dramatic battery loss, but I'm using Cinnamon. On Linux Mint 12 I was getting a good two hours worth of battery on my HP Pavillion dv6000, after upgrading to 14, I only get an hour at most.

I'm still on Mint 13 here with backports repo enabled. Jupiter is working well for me on my Dell XPS 14z with Mint 13 Maya & Cinnamon 1.6. In my opinion, Jupiter shouldn't even be necessary. Apparently from what I've read, Windows power management is still leaps & bounds above Linux power management. I don't really understand why that is with all of the mobile devices running linux-based OS these day. From what I understand the power management issues are not with the specific distro, but lie within the Linux Kernel. If a resource hog like Windows can get 3 - 4 hrs of battery life, you would think Linux would be to get at least that. Power management is an area where Linux still falls short.

-hogfan

hogfan wrote:I'm still on Mint 13 here with backports repo enabled. Jupiter is working well for me on my Dell XPS 14z with Mint 13 Maya & Cinnamon 1.6. In my opinion, Jupiter shouldn't even be necessary. Apparently from what I've read, Windows power management is still leaps & bounds above Linux power management. I don't really understand why that is with all of the mobile devices running linux-based OS these day. From what I understand the power management issues are not with the specific distro, but lie within the Linux Kernel. If a resource hog like Windows can get 3 - 4 hrs of battery life, you would think Linux would be to get at least that. Power management is an area where Linux still falls short.

-hogfan

This is precisely my understanding as well - although it does seem weird that it hasn't caught up yet. My laptop battery is a bit sketchy regardless of the kernel's power consumption, so I don't really worry about the issue, however (at least at this point - a new battery for the machine would change that) .

When I was running a hybrid GPU laptop, I also had poor battery performance. Both GPUs would always be on full power, and that was the issue. This was a few years ago though.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one with the problem.
I've decided to dump Linux Mint and give the new Fuduntu a shot...one of their claims is 30% longer battery life (over what I have no idea).
I'll still monitor the LM forums in the hopes that the mucky-mucks figure out their problems.

I am also getting very very poor battery life compared to Win7.
I have also a dual GPU laptop: Asus UX32VD (integrated intel HD, pluse NVidia GPU).
Would like to see a solution for this. Current battery life is almost unusable.

If this is an issue with Nvidia Optimus technology (dual GPU), then perhaps http://bumblebee-project.org/ together with proprietary Nvidia drivers can help?

I don't think the kernel nor the open source nouveau driver can control the power consumption of a Nvidia graphics card. This is why the closed source Nvidia driver might help. I don't know if bumplebee addresses the power consumption issue, but it might well do it in conjunction with the Nvidia driver.

has anybody try to upgrade the kernel and find if it helps to prolong the battery life?

This will surely solve your battery problem and also heating issues
First, open the rc.local file as the root user :

1sudo nano /etc/rc.local

Now, copy and paste the following lines just before the line exit 0 :

1chown -R $USER:$USER /sys/kernel/debug
2 echo OFF > /sys/kernel/debug/vgaswitcheroo/switch

The first line will make /sys/kernel/debug writable by the current user (who is executing the script, not you). The second line will turn off the high performance GPU.

Now, reboot your machine and you should be running on the Intel HD graphics. If you used the machine for a lot of time before doing the switch, it will take some time for it to cool off. Keep it turned off for at least half an hour and switch it back and you should feel the difference! If you encounter any problems, don’t forget to ask them in our forum and we’ll be happy to help!