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iiClouds 10-29-2012 10:56 AM

Slackware 14 (64-Bit Install) on laptop = Terrible battery life?
 
First post here. New to the forums. Linux novice.
I just installed Slack on to my laptop this morning while it was charging. I got the install and everything. Played around while it was charging. Now, I take my laptop off the charger and near 30 minutes later, the battery life is nearing 55%. Is battery life an issue with anyone else, or is it something I'm doing?

markush 10-29-2012 11:44 AM

Hello iiClouds, welcome to LQ and Slackware,

I have a subnotebook (Lenovo x100e, AMD, 2GB of RAM) with Slackware64-14 and the batterylife is more or less the same like with Windows 7 on the same computer.

Note that I have configured for low CPU-frequency (governor conservative), you'll find a tutorial here: http://docs.slackware.com/howtos:har...quency_scaling

But how about the batterylife on your laptop with Windows? Did you have another Linuxdistribution on the computer before you installed Slackware? And please tell us which Laptop you have (architecture, RAM etc.). Do the functionkeys work? can you configure the brightness of the screen (backlight)?

Markus

Mobile1 10-29-2012 12:05 PM

I too have the same kind of results with battery life, it seems like there is no battery life. I have to run my laptop with AC plugged when using Slackware 14 - Windows I can run for a few hours before it drops to an unusable state.

TobiSGD 10-29-2012 12:29 PM

Would be nice to get some more infos:
- Which hardware are you using?
- Which drivers?
- Is the CPU frequency scaling configured and working?
- Do you have laptop-mode-tools installed and configured?

guanx 10-29-2012 03:49 PM

Actually pm-utils is doing things very well for me.

TobiSGD 10-29-2012 04:07 PM

pm-utils are a set of tools for setting your system to suspend or hibernate. How does that prevent the battery from draining if the system is running?

D1ver 10-29-2012 04:59 PM

I have a Toshiba z830 running 14.0 at the moment. Under windows it was getting ~5 hours battery life. With a stock Slackware install I would get ~3 hours battery life. Luckily however, I found this page at the linux laptop wiki. Adding the following lines to my lilo kernel boot parameters gives me 5-6 hours battery life in Slackware depending on how aggressive I am with screen brightness.

Code:

append="acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 elevator=noop vt.default_utf8=0"

guanx 10-29-2012 05:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4817687)
pm-utils are a set of tools for setting your system to suspend or hibernate. How does that prevent the battery from draining if the system is running?

Code:

$ grep power.d /var/log/packages/pm-utils-*
etc/pm/power.d/
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/pcie_aspm
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/hal-cd-polling
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/xfs_buffer
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/intel-audio-powersave
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/harddrive
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/sched-powersave
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/journal-commit
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/laptop-mode
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/wireless
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/readahead
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/disable_wol
usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/sata_alpm


jtsn 10-29-2012 07:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by iiClouds (Post 4817496)
First post here. New to the forums. Linux novice.
I just installed Slack on to my laptop this morning while it was charging. I got the install and everything. Played around while it was charging. Now, I take my laptop off the charger and near 30 minutes later, the battery life is nearing 55%. Is battery life an issue with anyone else, or is it something I'm doing?

It's a known issue. Not in Slackware, but in Linux. You usually get about 50 % of the battery life of the pre-installed OS. By fiddling around with powertop and laptop-mode-tools you can get it up to about 70-80 %, if you are lucky.

Use BattStat on the pre-installed OS to look for the time/wattage you are aiming for, then compare the readouts of powertop to it.

piratesmack 10-29-2012 08:25 PM

It's going to depend on what hardware/drivers you're using, but on my Intel Core i3 (Sandybridge) laptop with Intel HD 3000 graphics I get a couple more hours of battery life after applying these tweaks:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...15_power&num=1

Now I get around 5-6 hours in Slackware64 14.0, which is the same as I got in Windows.

iiClouds 10-29-2012 10:39 PM

My battery life while doing the same stuff in Windows is usually about 2 and a half hours. I'm going to try setting the governor to something different. I'll report back tomorrow with what I get.

kite 10-29-2012 11:17 PM

My setup:

MacBook Pro 8,1 + mountain lion os: about 6 hours
MacBook Pro 8,1 + Slackware 14.0 x86_64: about 3 hours after tweaks to save some power.

Not satisfied for the battery life under slackware!

kite 10-30-2012 12:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by D1ver (Post 4817701)
I have a Toshiba z830 running 14.0 at the moment. Under windows it was getting ~5 hours battery life. With a stock Slackware install I would get ~3 hours battery life. Luckily however, I found this page at the linux laptop wiki. Adding the following lines to my lilo kernel boot parameters gives me 5-6 hours battery life in Slackware depending on how aggressive I am with screen brightness.

Code:

append="acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor pcie_aspm=force i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1 elevator=noop vt.default_utf8=0"

I just tried your approach because my system has i5 cpu/gpu, it helps a lot. XFCE reported one hour more battery life. I have about 4 hours and 20 minutes battery life!!!

D1ver 10-30-2012 02:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kite (Post 4817847)
I just tried your approach because my system has i5 cpu/gpu, it helps a lot. XFCE reported one hour more battery life. I have about 4 hours and 20 minutes battery life!!!

Glad to help :)
There is a little bit of info on some of the options in the Phoronix link that Piratesmack linked. I think they're all pretty harmless, I haven't noticed any negative efftects, only a doubling in battery life heh..

TobiSGD 10-30-2012 04:51 AM

Keep in mind that a bad battery life can also be caused by using the free drivers if you have a AMD/ATI or Nvidia videochip in your notebook.

ReaperX7 10-30-2012 09:38 PM

Try using this package from SlackBuilds and see if it helps with maintaining your battery.

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...op-mode-tools/

Also, you will want to use the proprietary drivers for any video hardware you have as they will contain more power saving tools and management options.

kite 10-30-2012 11:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ReaperX7 (Post 4818640)
Try using this package from SlackBuilds and see if it helps with maintaining your battery.

http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...op-mode-tools/

Also, you will want to use the proprietary drivers for any video hardware you have as they will contain more power saving tools and management options.

It is a conflict for stock pm-utils.

TobiSGD 10-31-2012 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kite (Post 4818666)
It is a conflict for stock pm-utils.

How do you come to that conclusion? Works fine here.

onebuck 10-31-2012 09:38 AM

Member Response
 
Hi,

I agree with TobiSGD, battery life will also depend on your graphics chipset. Noticed major differences when using the Intel graphics and then switch to Nvidia via BumbleBee-Optirun switching. While using the Nvidia then battery life is cut in half.

rinias 10-31-2012 03:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4818009)
Keep in mind that a bad battery life can also be caused by using the free drivers if you have a AMD/ATI or Nvidia videochip in your notebook.

To be clear, you mean that using nouveau gives worse battery life than nvidia, for example? Or the other way around? Or something else completely?

As for me, my laptop gets a pretty solid hour and a half no matter what the system (Windows or Linux), although I have never tested laptop-mode-tools. I'll give it a spin to see how it works!

Thanks.

TobiSGD 10-31-2012 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rinias (Post 4819199)
To be clear, you mean that using nouveau gives worse battery life than nvidia, for example? Or the other way around? Or something else completely?

Neither the nouveau nor the radeon drivers are up to par with the proprietary drivers when it comes to power-management.

guanx 10-31-2012 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4818952)
How do you come to that conclusion? Works fine here.

You are right. Laptop mode tools works fine, though it's redundant when slackware already comes with pm-utils.

kite 10-31-2012 09:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD (Post 4818952)
How do you come to that conclusion? Works fine here.

I have not dig deep. But if you google for "laptop-mode-tool pm-utils conflict", you could see some report of this conflict.

brobr 11-01-2012 09:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kite (Post 4819357)
I have not dig deep. But if you google for "laptop-mode-tool pm-utils conflict", you could see some report of this conflict.

I did: a good hit seems:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools

It shows how to address possible conflicts (add "#Troubleshooting" to above address or scroll to bottom of page), but pm-utils and laptop-mode-tools do not appear mutually exclusive if you inactivate the overlap in their actions.

TobiSGD 11-01-2012 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brobr (Post 4819739)
I did: a good hit seems:https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop_Mode_Tools

It shows how to address possible conflicts (add "#Troubleshooting" to above address or scroll to bottom of page), but pm-utils and laptop-mode-tools do not appear mutually exclusive if you inactivate the overlap in their actions.

Thanks.


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