Help! Laptop running hot

[varaonaid]

Hello,

I'm currently running LM Elyssa. I love it. Wouldn't want to change distros, LM is fantastic.

However, I have a problem that's worrying me. My laptop has been running much hotter since I've installed LM and, though I guess it could be my imagination, I think the problem is getting worse. It's getting to be uncomfortable to use it on my lap and the fan is running quite a bit more than it used to. Nothing else is different or out of the ordinary and I've had the machine long enough to know what's "normal" for it.

Strange thing is, I was running plain vanilla Ubuntu (8.04) and didn't have this problem (had several others with the distro itself, though, which is why I switched).

Any idea what could be causing the problem or solutions to change it?

Thanks so much in advance!

All the best,
Rae

[Husse]

It could be the power control that is less efficient but if you've had the laptop for some time it can be time to clean out the dust
The first priority in this case is to avoid static electricity!!
Then depending on how it's made it can be more or less easy
My wifes Toshiba was fairly simple to clean, you opened a hatch and found the fan for the cpu - and it was dusty!
But that varies widely....

[N1ckR]

Power saving features are broken in Ubuntu Hardy which and Elyssa, which could be a cause of heat build up (depends how much power saving the machine itself can manage regardless of the OS).

Have a look at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerManagement

Depending on your machine this could make a massive difference (eg without these tweaks only CPU scaling works on my Laptop).

Cheers, Nick

[BAD]

See if there is a BIOS flash update most manufacturers ship laptops without concern for a good BIOS. I recently fixed 2 that were running hot and shutting down. I flashed the BIOS and that solved the heat problem.

[Dutchmaster]

RPM distros are the only ones I've found so far that keep my laptop cool. I may run Debian on my desktop with no snags, but not the laptop. As for Ubuntu Intrepid, it's no better on my laptop than Hardy or Elyssa.

I hope you have better results than I did.

[N1ckR]

RPM distros are the only ones I've found so far that keep my laptop cool. I may run Debian on my desktop with no snags, but not the laptop. As for Ubuntu Intrepid, it's no better on my laptop than Hardy or Elyssa.

I hope you have better results than I did.

Do you happen to know why the RPM distros you have tried allow your laptop to run cooler ?
Would be interesting to find out what is different, eg different packages, packages configured differently ?

Cheers, Nick.