Ubuntu – Laptop minimal power consumption tweaks

kernelpower-management

I've recently installed Ubuntu 11.10 on a new Lenovo X220 laptop with a 9-cells battery. I have a trans-atlantic flight coming up, and I would like to use my laptop during it. Lenovo claims that this battery should last for a really long time.

How can I configure my laptop to consume minimal power? I didn't see any detailed power management panel in the system settings, so how to I tweak it?

Also, can someone report a tried-and-tested configuration? Performance is not an issue, since I'm going to use it for coding or reading during the flight, not for playing games of watching movies. Playing audio would be nice, but not a must.

Best Answer

Besides Powertop (available from Software Center), and turning all options to GOOD when on battery, you need to set several kernel parameters:

i915.i915_enable_rc6=1
i915.i915_enable_fbc=1
i915.lvds_downclock=1
pcie_aspm=force

Add to /etc/default/grub, Line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 i915.lvds_downclock=1"

call sudo update-grub after editing...

This boosted my battery life from 4 hours to over 10 hours (without networking)

Check out this post http://www.williambrownstreet.net/blog/?p=387

Related Question