Hi, i recently purchased my second laptop, primarily for linux. When i chose it, my main concern was battery life.

Just to make a side note. When i say battery life, i mean how long the computer takes until the battery goes flat. Not how many years/ect it takes till the battery will no longer hold charge.

My new computer claims to be able to get 10 hours. Although it's a bit off, i get a satisfying little bit over 6 hours, from full charge. This is running Windows 7
I couldn't wait to put Linux on my new computer, i have, but it just isn't satisfying because i only get about 4 hours while running linux, tried three different distros, and all roughly the same.

Does this frustrate others?

i don't think linux will reduce your battery life so much..... ups and downs may occur according to your use but no such thing that Linux will enhance or reduce battery life.....
When i purchased my laptop its battery used to give 5 hrs backup on windows and more or less same with lnux.
Now my battery is too old to give any sort of power back-up.......

I'm using Mint 10 on my Dell inspiron 15R laptop and the battery life after 6 months is around three hours where with Windows 7 its around 2 hours only.

1) it seems that powerTOP will help you...
2) moreover,please read this gentoo linux wiki.
3) they say that openSUSE is best for laptops regarding battery backup.

I've given you hints on why youur battery life isnt as good with linux as with windows.

For those people thatdont want to go looking, heres the links-

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-start-887136/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...tro-os-889539/

For the really lazy, heres the short version of what I was saying in other threads-

Its a 'sandy bridge' laptop. 'Sandy bridge' is still getting dirvers included in the kernel, xorg-server etc.. So unless you are ruinning at least kernel 2.6.38, sandy bridge is running without the full driver set, which will hurt battery life. (and even with 2.6.38+ there is still sandy bridge inclusions, so 2.6.38 doesnt have all the drivers).

Kernels 2.6.35+ have power regressions. You might or might not be affected, but without actually doing some research yourself, its hard to know.

Its an 'optimus' laptop, so you will need to disable teh nVidia GPU to increase battery life. When you compare winwdows battery life and linux battery life, optimus will help, as the power use to display accelerated content from the intel video chip is higher than displaying the same content from the nVidia GPU.I have no idea why you bought an 'optimus' laptop for linux use, especially if you wanted battery life.....

No, linux can affect battery life.

1 members found this post helpful.

I run Ubuntu 10.10 and XP on a Lenovo R61i and while my experience is subjective I can't see any functioal difference in battery life between the two distros.

I got a Dell Inspiron 15R N5010 a few monthes ago. With Mepis 11 I can activly use it (watch a movie & browse the web at the same time) for about an hour. If I'm not doing much over 2 hours. I don't know about Windows 7 as I never ran it long enough to find out, or care.

Cascede, i appreciate your help with those other threads, i've even left you good feedback, even tried twice but this websight wouldn't allow that. Although you've given me suggestions, i'm still skeptical because i seemed to have encountered the same issue with two different laptops, one that should have been fine. I was just simply asking to see if anyone else has the issue.

Also if you compile your own kernels, you can set settings when you compile them that will extend battery life.

And of course go to your power settings and set it to turn display off after a short time of idle, and the same with the hard drive.

Some linux distros have laptop kernels; kernels compiled with settings in the benefit of laptops like lower power use.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne@WayneSallee.com