Maximize Battery Life on Your Laptop in Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

An area where Linux lags behind Microsoft Windows is efficient power use on laptops that are running on batteries. Recent Linux kernel releases have added a number of tweaks to your computer's behavior to make it run more efficiently while on battery power. Many of these tweaks are not enabled by default. It is up to the user to make the correct tweaks to the kernel to make the computer run more efficiently.

Casual computer users do not like to dive into changing kernel parameters. The commands to make changes to the Linux kernel on the fly can be quite complicated and esoteric. There is now a tool called powertop that will help you get the most of your laptop batteries. The powertop utility delves into the inner workings of your Linux kernel and the processes that are running on your operating system, and makes a determination on which ones are draining the most battery power. It presents its results in an easy to understand table. Powertop will even disable the power wasting kernel settings and processes with a simple key press.

One of the coolest features of powertop is that it displays how much power is being drained from your computer in real time. As you disable power hungry processes you will see your computers power efficiency improve right before your eyes.

To install powertop, open the software center and type the word powertop in the search bar. You will be presented with the option to install. The installation will only take a few seconds.

Sadly, there is no graphical interface available for powertop, so it must be run from the command line. Although Linux has made great strides in creating desktop applications that run with a graphical interfaces, some of the best utilities, like powertop, are still driven by the command line.

To run powertop, open up terminal and type:

sudo powertop and then enter your password.

After a period of about five seconds, after powertop collects information, it will display your most power hungry kernel settings and programs.

Another method to invoke the powertop command is to use the -p switch, like: sudo powertop -p. The -p switch will display the process ID number, which makes it easier to track down programs.

You should run powertop using sudo since the program will provide suggestions to make changes to your kernel, which require root access.

Powertop integrates well with the latest edition of Ubuntu 10.04. Canonical is providing support for the application through 2015. This is good sign that improvements will continue to be made to powertop in the years to come. One improvement that may be in the offing is a graphical interface which will allow greater integration into Ubuntu Netbook Remix. This will allow netbook users to get the maximum life out of their portable computer.

Source: LessWatts.org