Hi,

I have a Toshiba Satellite A215 [AMD Turion64x2, 2gb ram,ATI Graphics]
I am trying to configure linux to use the smallest amount of battery as possible. This is going really well, and I have surpassed Vista by 30mins, with a special program on vista to force the monitor to be turned off (apparantly the monitor uses the most amount of power on a laptop).

Is there a way to force the monitor to turn off for a laptop? I can close the lid, but this isn't convinient if i'm constantly opening and clsoing. it's probably bad for the laptop too.

I'm sure there is a way to do it, I just don't know how. I've tried following the files in /etc/acpi.. to find out whats making it turn off, but that didn't lead anywhere; just to the laptop-mode stuff.

So overall, question:
How can I force my laptop's monitor / screen to turn off, not just lower brightness?

Anyone?

You may have to tell us what GUI you're using before someone can give you a meaningful answer. That said, if you're running KDE, right click on desktop / Configure Desktop / Display / Power Control, and set it up however you want it. I expect other GUIs have a similar feature. You might also be able to set a screen power down time in your machine's BIOS setup.

dpms also needs to be enabled on most distros, so that you can use the screen power management in the gui.

try a MAN DPMS...