I feel like Kubuntu is much cooler when I put my hands my netbook's keyboard than Mageia even though 'sensors' command showing about the same temp. Both have ATI proprietary driver installed. Using Mageia on my netbook is not a comfortable experience anymore for me.

Everything in Kubuntu was fine. It's stable and easy to use (even easier than Ubuntu itself) just like Mageia. But, I just don't like it. Kubuntu is just doesn't have the same taste as Mageia. I've been a Mandriva fan for years. I love urpmi even though auto-orphan feature is flawed. I love dual-arch because it's easy to build a customized system without much knowledge.

I don't want to leave Mageia because of this 'weird' heat problem.

My netbook specification: http://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrab...specifications. The E-350 one with Radeon HD 6310.

The way you get heat is, well, by things executing -- be it the processor or the graphics -- and ventilation (or lack of it). You know, put a laptop on your lap and you get cooked? The thing has to have air flowing through it.

So, eliminate the simple stuff -- does the fan come on frequently? Is it sitting on a flat surface so air can get though it? That sort of thing -- the thing has to able to breathe.

Then you get to the fun part: what's running (and why)?

How busy are your CPUs? Just sitting there, your CPUs should be pretty much quiescent, somewhere around 1%-2% (not 50% or greater). There shouldn't be much activity at all unless you're doing something (or something else is doing something). How much "stuff" is running all the time (actually executing, not sleeping)? Take a look at top and see what it tells you -- you should not see a whole lot of time on much of anything but X or a browser you may have open for a long period (like hours or maybe days). Most things should be seconds or a few minutes in the top display.

Do you have GKrellM on the box? If so, start it up and watch the display -- all your CPUs will show graphs of activity (there are a number of things displayed by default plus you can turn on additional information such as temperatures, fans, etc. It's a good tool for monitoring system load (and then you can go find just what is causing the load using top or other tools). If you don't have it by default, it's probably available from a software repository or take a look at http://members.dslextreme.com/users/...m/gkrellm.html.

Something you can do is shut down unneeded stuff -- looking at top will make you wonder if you really need all these running all the time and you can start eliminating things. Running KDE? it's gotten to be a behemoth and there's a whole lot of fat clogging up your system -- disable if you don't need it or don't use it, turn it off. Try a different, leaner, desktop environment, say, Xfce.

Hope this helps some.

both kubuntu and mageia were idle and had about the same temperature. the keyboard just cooked my hands on mageia. the cpu usage was about the same too.

haven't tried GKrellM before.

kubuntu uses kde too but doesn't give me this weird heat problem.

maybe CPU temp is not the only source of those heat?

On my Acer Aspire One netbook, purchased in 2009, I ran Gnome 2 and wasn't having any heat issues. Just a thought!

Other than the CPUs, one other source of heat is the graphics processing unit (GPU) (you mentioned ATI proprietary drivers being installed).

If you're doing things that are graphics heavy; e.g., games, that might explain some of it (rendering 3-D is computationally a heavy load, not so much the CPUs but definitely GPU at high frame rates).

If the thing is getting hot enough to cause discomfort, there's something wrong; does the fan ever come on -- it should. If not, you may have a bad fan. Where's the battery pack (under the keyboard -- you might have a bad battery pack)? When it's hot, flip it up on its side and touch where the battery pack is, might tell you something. Disk drives can get pretty warm if there' a lot of disk activity. Laptops are packed really tight, there's not much space in the case for air to move around and if air can't move or is blocked you're going to build up a lot of heat -- have you tried blowing the dust out it (dust bunnies will be there and they need to be gotten out). I'd try the physical stuff before digging into the software.

Hope this helps some.

the thing is I don't have this kind of discomfort while using fedora (GNOME 3 with radeon/ati) or kubuntu (KDE 4 with fglrx). mageia is just plain hotter.

the fan seems fine and the battery also.

blowing the dust out of what? I'm sorry but I don't get it.

my netbook uses an integrated GPU, AMD Fusion.

really. currently i'm watching a video on youtube and watching 720p video using vlc with fedora. the temperature is 80°C but the keyboard doesn't feel hot. using radeon driver too.

in mageia this could make my netbook heats up a lot even though showing the same about the same temperature.

sensors output on fedora

Have you looked at https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=351 and -- possibly -- https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1471?

Are you running release 1 or release 2 (and, if you're running release 1 perhaps it would be a good idea to update to release 2)? Are all available patches applied?

Take a look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_...Notes#X_server (the on-line version 2 release notes about the X server and graphics card drivers) and see if there is some relevance.

Have you posted your problem at the Mageia forum? Get an answer?

Have you considered that Mageia might just be the problem (given that Fedora does not exhibit the problem) and thought about maybe trying something else instead?

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Seems like it's more about disabling kernel mode setting if you want to use Catalyst. My boot parameter has nokmsboot parameter so there is no problem like this.

Mageia 2 with all package updated.

Everything works fine. 3D acceleration is good.

Nope. I think it's just much faster to get responses in this forum.

Just tried SLAX live CD. Playing HD video and got 80 degrees Celcius like Fedora but didn't make the keyboard feel so hot that makes it painful to put your hand on it like in Mageia.

Um ..., well, I've tried Vine Linux and it got this kind of heat problem too. If I remember correctly, ROSA Linux is hot too.

It is strange. Now Mageia is quiet cool even after playing HD videos and watching Youtube. The fan is noisy though. It's not connected to AC adapter FYI.

Just read this post http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtop...174420#p174420 and got some thoughts.

The cpufreq is ondemand on both battery and AC mode.

Hi, I'd be looking at the services running, especially

strigi/nepomuk desktop search database.

you may find Mageia starts cataloging your data asap, where as (k)ubuntu starts it later after install/start-up.

My 2c.

How weird. I had the exact opposite problem.

Kubuntu 13.04 Alpha was cooking my keyboard, but Mageia 3 beta 3 is not. Both were using the proprietary AMD video driver.

Mind you, if I revert to the free radeon driver on Mageia -- which apparently I have to do if I wanna watch Netflix -- the GPU heats up again. :/