Laptop power saving/management
 

Ok, th power saving and management on my laptop as it is is pretty poor, as you'd expect seeing as I don't know what to do about it... How do I set my laptop up for power saving, and as you explain could you tell me WHY I'm doing each bit?

For AMD processor, there is a hack with setpci tool to do
powersaving.

I used it on my desktop because I found the temp of my processor
was always = 60-62°C with 0% CPU used...

With my NForce2 chipset, the command is :
setpci -v -H1 -s 0:0.0 6F=$(printf %x $((0x$(setpci -H1 -s 0:0.0 6F) | 0x10)))

I put it in /etc/rc.d/rc.local so it is always started at boot
with this command, now my processor temp is near 40°C when
it has 0% used

see : http://www.daniel.nofftz.net/linux/A...ing-HOWTO.html
As Linux is an Open System, that means it is up to the user to set it

It doesn't mention my chipset, VIA K8N800...

btw, by why am I doing it, I meant what does it achieve rather than "Why do *I have* to do it"

I know why i'm doing it, xD

Unfortunally there is no reference to this chipset in the link I posted...
Maybe this link could interest you :
http://people.arcada.fi/~westerlk/Aspire1362LC.html

Hmm... I need something a little more explicit in what I need to do... Any more ideas?

If you mean with "power saving" the suspend to RAM function,
you will have to recompile the kernel with this feature

As you have a laptop, you could use ACPI as power management
you can use the slackare kernel with acpi or recompile the kernel
with ACPI options. Install acpid package and enable acpi at boot
with chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.acpid (make sure you don't load
apm module, maybe add apm to /etc/hotplug/blacklist)