Linux Mint Forums

When using Mint6, power management was working like a charm with my Core2Duo Toshiba laptop.
All power management utilities (to my pleasant surprise) were installed by default under Mint6 and worked like a charm.
I recently installed Mint7, and now I get less than half an hour of autonomy on the battery, and after getting a warning that my "battery is critically low" it shuts down a few seconds later before I even have time to save my work!

As a comparison, up until the day before I installed mint 7 (under Mint6), I was gettting over an hour, almost 2 hours (and when the laptop was almost new I was getting 4 hours under windows XP but I understand that there is deterioration over time, however, that does not explain going from 1-2 hours under mint6 to 20-30 minutes under mint7).

Could someone please help? I'm a newbie and not well versed in Linux yet.

Have you done any systems analysis? For example either using "top" in a terminal (or the GUI System Monitor) to see if your CPU is running some errant process at 100%? That would be my first step. Secondly, is the fan spinning away crazily? What about your CPU/motherboard temperatures? You can use lm-sensors and conky to montor the temps...let us know the output from "top"..

top?
there's a reason why I mentioned I was a newbie... sorry...
I saw CPM, DOS, and then was forced into windows which all but crippled my command line aptitudes...
I need time to figure this out... look it up... unless you have a quickie set of instructions that doesn't require too much space/effort to help me out.
the fan is normal, temperature seems as usual... speed is OK except things run under Wine, such as a simple utility like irfanview which is way slower than under windows.

My Toshiba is a Centrino, meaning it has (1) the Intel power management chips, (2) a low power consumption wi-fi, and (3) the low power consumption core-duo2 processor.
With Mint6, I had access to power management profiles, for different situations, with auto-switching of modes, and all of my special function keys worked properly.
Now, the only one that works, is Fn+F6/F7 which decreases/increases screen brightness.
No other special functions work.

So clearly, Mint7 does not implement the same power management utilities, or has dropped some, or does not detect my laptop correctly as Mint6 did.

Shouldn't things be backwards-compatible?
Isn't it the norm to generally have that built-in, as long as there's no serious impediment to that being done? I mean... surely such a utility is easily migrated.

Timmi wrote:Shouldn't things be backwards-compatible?

Should. Not always automatic. Obviously some sort of regression. Likely, almost certain, there is a HAL tweak for power management on your toshiba lappy that you need to implement.

AK Dave wrote:

Timmi wrote:Shouldn't things be backwards-compatible?

Should. Not always automatic. Obviously some sort of regression. Likely, almost certain, there is a HAL tweak for power management on your toshiba lappy that you need to implement.

It's a recent Core2duo and all Centrino... there's really no reason... I mean... if you can't make it work with a Toshiba... with their market share, what are you doing, how do you justify that? And implement a WHAT? I'm sorry, but I'm a newbie. I went to Mint because it works "out of the box". If I have to start debugging things, I'll go with a more widespread distribution like Ubuntu, regress back to that. I chose Mint because I was of the impression that Mint went beyond what the folks at Ubuntu did (although a little slower with releases sometimes).

I think that not implementing easy hardware support out of the box, that is regression... going back a decade if you ask me. And not including hardware support that you already have the drivers for, well, I wouldn't know WHAT to call that... except maybe an oversight, or something on the backburner you haven't had time to test b4 the release? To me, it just doesn't make sense that this not work.

It's a recent Core2duo and all Centrino... there's really no reason... I mean... if you can't make it work with a Toshiba... with their market share, what are you doing, how do you justify that? And implement a WHAT? I'm sorry, but I'm a newbie. I went to Mint because it works "out of the box". If I have to start debugging things, I'll go with a more widespread distribution like Ubuntu

If I have to start debugging things
More context needed..

Exactly which Toshiba model # do you have
--if its a secret, I don't think without being able to check the actual model #, anyone can help you beyond some general guidelines
http://www.linux.org/hardware/laptop.html

As to going to Ubuntu
--I assume the equivalent version release of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), in which Linux mint 7-gloria is based..
http://www.linuxmint.com

Timmi wrote:It's a recent Core2duo and all Centrino... there's really no reason... I mean... if you can't make it work with a Toshiba...

Its a laptop. There are quirks. It is likely that your quirk is documented and you may need to do nothing more sophisticated than a minor tweak.

I'm sorry, but I'm a newbie.

I'm sorry, but thats evident.

I went to Mint because it works "out of the box".

Its great when that happens. It doesn't always work perfectly "out of the box" for every possible combination of hardware components.

If I have to start debugging things, I'll go with a more widespread distribution like Ubuntu, regress back to that.

Mint is a refinement based on Ubuntu. When you switch to Ubuntu, you're very likely to have the exact same issues. Let me know how that works out for you.

AK Dave wrote: Its a laptop. There are quirks. It is likely that your quirk is documented and you may need to do nothing more sophisticated than a minor tweak.

I'm sorry, but I'm a newbie.

I'm sorry, but thats evident.

I went to Mint because it works "out of the box".

Its great when that happens. It doesn't always work perfectly "out of the box" for every possible combination of hardware components.

Stop princess, it's help I wanted, not teenaged smartass remarks. I know it's a "refinement" as I've been enthusiastically touting it as such to anyone willing to listen. But REMOVING something that WORKS without tweaking is NOT a refinement, it's REGRESSION.

I did a little bit of digging, and the brand-spanking-new Debian 5 (July2009) supports processor clockspeed scaling. And so do other distributions based on Debian. Mint 6 appeared to manage things quite nicely because automony was good (2 hours versus 20 minutes).

What I've witnessed here, since I'm with Mint, is that some changes offered in Ubuntu arrive significantly late in Mint, and are sometimes implemented with reluctance. This is symptomatic of infighting, not of progress of any kind. For example, in Mint6, Office 2.x instead of the more user-friendly 3.x, ignoring user interface improvements and arguing no significant new features were implemented in 3, saying they'd rather wait for the next version. With this in mind, I suspect that they simply decided to DROP the power management of Mint6, because they know something new is coming in the next release of Ubuntu (seeing it in Debian5), as they prefer concentrating on development of the newer implementation rather than supporting an existing one. It may be a more efficient way to run a shop, to cut corners, but it's not rendering service to the end-users... and I'm an end-user. As such, I'm concerned about the services and features the OS renders to my machin, and when you take something out, that has been developed, tested, implemented, and makes the machine work at it's full potential, and then take it out, I have a problem with that.

So thanks all, for your efforts to help. The fact that someone on the support team/development team hasn't interceded here, tells me I'm probably right. So I'm not going to wait around one year for this to be implemented again. They have the code, and there is no valid reason for it to no longer be included in the release.

I'm either going back to Mint6, or Ubuntu (which may make more sense), or WattOS (which is a bit risky as it's in Beta3).
All are downloaded and burned... I'll take a few days to think over what is best to do looking forward.

DrHu wrote: More context needed.. Exactly which Toshiba model # do you have
As to going to Ubuntu --I assume the equivalent version release of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), in which Linux mint 7-gloria is based..
http://www.linuxmint.com

Thanks DrHu.
It is an A100 -VA7 series. 2 years old. CoreDuo2 (pentium5500), exact model PSAANC-VA705C. My point is, Mint6 had it working, autonomy was fine. I don't understand why they'd remove support for a machine when they have it down pat. If new power management utilities have been introduced in Debian5, fine, stop refining it, but at least offer it.

(as far as I'm concerned, my laptop is no longer fully supported, and before someone suggests I get a newer machine: I neither have the money to upgrade it, nor do my software applications dictate that I should.)

@OP,

For now, going back to Mint 6 might be your best bet. I don't know that going to Ubuntu would make much sense, because if the problem is there in Mint 7, chances are it will be there in the current Ubuntu 9.04 as well. If the argument is that Ubuntu users, being a larger group, might have found a fix, chances are that the same fix, if it exists, would also work in Mint 7, meaning there would be no actual need to go to Ubuntu. Maybe this will be taken care of in Ubuntu 9.10 (and thus presumably the upcoming Mint , but that's still in alpha AFAIK (and in the case of Mint 8 not yet begun AFAICS).

Don't know anything about WattOS, but I'd be a little wary if it's just a beta. If you're considering other distros, how about, say, MEPIS or PCLinuxOS?

You're right... I'm in Ubuntu now and there is no difference.
except that right-click on an image save-as doesn't bring up the dialog in firefox... yes i know, it's totally unrelated, but I'm just saying, I'm no better off.
One thing that realy bugs me, is that Debian5 is already out, has support for clockspeed scaling, and it'll take a while longer for ubuntu to have it and even longer for Mint. I wish that some components, like this, were offered as an add-on. I'm dreaming, but I did see an example on a site where you build your own Linux disto, and it had the option of adding the Intel Wireless card Centrino driver. Many modern notebooks offer Centrino chipsets on their motherboards (maybe as much as a third, in the past more, but now there are probably many manufacturers offering cheaper alternatives), so it would make sense to offer the Centrino drivers as an install option.

Does anyone happen to have a link to Toshiba centrino power management drivers for Linux?
I had a link before I reformatted, to a site by toshiba where they claim support for the linux community, but now, searching, I can't find it for the life of me.