Battery charge with Mint on laptop

[vinoman]

I have a Asus 1015PX netbook that has Win 7 starter on it and it gets 5hrs per battery charge. I would like to install Mint on it but my concern is that the battery charge may be less once I install Linux as opposed to windows. Many have mentioned this in past forum threads. I have also read that the newer 3.0 kernel handles power/battery management better.

So will a Mint install give me as good a battery charge life as the Win7 install? I'm hoping that Mint 12 will once its out.

[Anakinholland]

There's another topic going on this subject.

It's a kernel-issue, not a distribution one, and seems to only affect some types of laptop/batteries.

That being said, your situation is really easily testable, by just booting from a liveCD while not having a power-adapter attached?

Good luck!!

Anakin

[vinoman]

Thanks. I tried it with Ubuntu 11.10 because its running the 3.0 kernel, which Mint will have soon with Mint 12. It came up 3hr 20min. When I went back to Win7 it was 5 hr. 30 min. Too bad. I will stay with Win 7 on my netbook for now. But I will install Mint 12 on my desktop when it is released.

[odo5435]

by just booting from a liveCD while not having a power-adapter attached

This is a good suggestion but you'll need to take into account the extra power that will be being used to run the DVD drive.

It came up 3hr 20min. When I went back to Win7 it was 5 hr. 30 min

See above. On our Asus 1005P I've not noticed any sizable difference between running Windows or Linux (between 6 - 7 hours depending on what we're doin').

[vinoman]

Good point, I'll keep that in mind.

[Anakinholland]

This is a good suggestion but you'll need to take into account the extra power that will be being used to run the DVD drive.

Fair enough

My netbook doesn't have one, I run everything from USB. Don't know how much the difference is between the two, but still a good point.

[vinoman]

This is a good suggestion but you'll need to take into account the extra power that will be being used to run the DVD drive.

Fair enough

My netbook doesn't have one, I run everything from USB. Don't know how much the difference is between the two, but still a good point.

I tried making a USB drive with usb-creator-gtk but it didn't work. I have never got a usb drive to boot up.

[Anakinholland]

It's been touch and go for me as well, although Unetbootin on Windows 7 is pretty consistently successful...

I found this page to be really helpful: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-crea ... e-usb-pen/

[vinoman]

It's been touch and go for me as well, although Unetbootin on Windows 7 is pretty consistently successful...

I found this page to be really helpful: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-crea ... e-usb-pen/

I did try Unetbootin too, but it didn't work either. Thanks for the instructions but its too complicated to deal with. when time comes I'll use my external DVD drive which works fine.

[proxima_centauri]

Make sure your CPU is set to ONDEMAND frequency. There is a CPU applet you can add to the panel to figure that out. Make sure you are using appropriate brightness levels to conserve battery life.

There is a command line tool called powertop you can try to extend battery life. It gives you tuning options to reduce power, available in the repo
http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/

[Anakinholland]

According to this article, the problem is identified and should be solved, but maybe not soon. Kernel 3.2 has been feature-frozen, so likely will not be implemented till 3.3.

Cheers,

Anakin