Whenever my battery gets low, there is no warning state. It will drain to 0% completely before it shuts off (not shut down).

I obviously want to prevent this. I searched the power icon but I couldnt find the settings.

Lots more information...

What laptop does this with its battery and which linux distribution and desktop do you have installed on it?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...Ask_a_Question

I am running kubuntu 10.04 on acer netbook. I have gnome installed too.

KDE...

There is a laptop battery meter for KDE. Is that what you have installed but can't use to see your battery charge?

There is also a Widget that you might like. The KDE User Guide that I consult for my openSUSE 11.4 installation gives more information; Chapter 9.

http://doc.opensuse.org/products/ope...wersave.widget

Chapter 9.1 is about the Widget, but Chapters 9.2 and 9.3 should interest you as well.

The Internet tells me that having the latest BIOS might help with the problem. Have you checked your BIOS settings for anything relevant to battery use?

If you're using kde, click the battery icon in your system tray, and a small widget like window will pop up showing the charge percent left ect. There will also be an icon down to the bottem right on this window, of a spanner/shifter, click that. Clicking the spanner/shifter icon will open a new window with your power manager profiles. You may want to alter these profiles as they sound messed up. There will also be an "advanced battery setting" tab, click that and you'll be able to see what percent your computer regards as low warning and critical, and you may change these to what you regard as appropriate. Kde displays a message for me when ever my battery reaches my percents that i have designated to, low, warning, and critical. Check these features to make sure something wacky hasn't been configured in here.

It is under system preferences : power management -> system settings

That is just another way to get to what i described