Which Linux Distributions are specially made for Laptops?
 

Hello!


I have tried and tested Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Arch Linux and Windows. Recently I have come across Open SUES.

I was wondering what are some Linux distros that are specially designed for laptops.

I am using HP Envy 4 Ultrabook - 1046 TX

Arch, while running good on my desktop, creates a lot of complications on my laptop and gives poor battery life even with all tunables turned good with powertop and laptop mode tools installed and configured well.

The same thing is with Ubuntu and derivatives - very poor battery life no matter what I do (I have tried almost all the tricks).

I don't like Ubuntu over Arch anyway because Arch is minimal and highly customizable which is a thing that I've always loved about Arch.

Recently I have come across Open SUES and it works fine as a live USB OS, but I haven't installed it yet. Another thing that I would like to mention is that I tried 32bit of Open SUES while my device is built on 64 bit architecture. So perhaps lowing down the process size made it seem so good at the beginning but might cause problems later.

I am looking for something with good battery life without compromising graphics (say for example KDE with Open SUES), and also good software support.

A friend of mine told me that rpm based distros have lesser free software than deb based. Honestly, it's something hard to believe. Linux community is very wide and I don't think whether I use rpm based or deb based or even Arch, in most cases I'm going to get almost all the software that I need.

Anyway, battery life and good GUI (I like KDE) are most important for me. So any suggestions?

i used fedora, ubuntu , and now i use mint in my laptops, and all of them cost the same battery life (same as Windows7, i have Dual system). every distros have the same free software. but ubuntu is more easy to install, because of the package manager. so how about kubuntu, a Variant of ubuntu installed kde desktop.

Sorry i can't answer your question exactly, but many different desktop environments can be installed under Gnu/Linux. I used kde4 for two years. I've recently begun using Mate + Cinnamon, and i've examined that battery life has been extended by 30 minutes.

kde = heavyweight = lower battery life. If your focus is good battery life then you need to start experimenting with more lightweight desktop environments.

Either way, you seem to have liked OpenSUSE (SUSE, not SUES), so why don't you try it. It's my distro of choice on laptops, mated with the XFCE DE.

I prefer Fedora with XFCE myself on my laptops. They seem to be working fairly well. Only slightly worse than Windows.

You can make any distribution lightweight enough to run on a laptop. Its just that most don't come out of the box configured that way.

Take a look at these sites, and read up on the process. I have an Arch Linux laptop that's 3 years old and still gets 2.5 hours of battery time.

http://www.howtogeek.com/55185/how-t...-linux-laptop/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Powertop

Battery life has nothing to do with Desktop environment.
I just did a quick google search on the matter - check this link.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...p_vitals&num=1


Numerous factors can be responsible for the reduced battery life:
1) Screen Brightness maybe set to the fullest consuming the most battery
2) Another thing to look at would be the devices attached to the laptop - such as a Laptop cooling pad, or a phone connected to the laptop for charging.
3) Any CD/DVD drives that may have been inserted and just lying there causing them to spin every now and then you click the relevant icon.
4) Enabling a wi-fi connection can also cause the battery to drain.

Try Fuduntu it was fedora based at one time and seemed to work good on laptops at that time. However, I don't know if the same holds true after fuduntu forked from fedora.

From your link:

I'd like to see what openbox's consumption is.

It's probably a positive number :)

Some years ago, someone did a lot of testing and found that the choice of distro was actually more important than the choice of GUI when it came to power used. His results would be dated, but not the point: that lots of things are going on in the background, and this varies from distro to distro.

Some good ways to reduce power consumption can be found here
http://www.lesswatts.org/

This seems to be down at the moment, so here's another
http://www.howtogeek.com/55185/how-t...-linux-laptop/

Guess I missed the second page. [:P]

But 2W here and there shouldn't really make that big a difference.

Anyways, the first page also said this:

Oh you copy-cat you. I was linking to that in this thread before it was cool.

Don't listen to your friend. He doesn't know what he's talking about. rpm, and debs are equal.
People like to exaggerate their credibility on subjects to make them sound important. This leads to unearned credibility and friends asking their advice on said topic; following it with disappointing results. I try to always double check my info now, to make sure it is accurate.
For example, my ex girlfriends brother wanted to buy a laptop for games but knew shit all about computers, so he asked his friend to help him pick one which would be capable to play games. His friend was supposedly really knowledgeable on computers. His friend chose a laptop for him, he bought it, but it didn't even have a graphics card and my ex girlfriends bro couldn't play all the games he wanted to.

I have Slackware on two laptops. Previously, I've had Ubuntu, Fluxbox, and Debian on various machines.

I tend to use lighter-weight desktops, such as Fluxbox and E17, but that's because I prefer them.

They all worked just fine. I didn't notice any significant variation in battery life.