Fedora – Will switching from Gnome to LXDE improve battery life

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I currently have Fedora 14 and the battery life is not so good. I am planning to switch to Fedora 16. Will I get significantly more battery life if I go for the LXDE spin instead of GNOME?

Best Answer

I doubt that LXDE vs GNOME will make a significant difference, but I don't have hard figures. I doubt less that the default configuration of LXDE and the default configuration of GNOME will make some difference. To keep power consumption down, turn off desktop effects (animations, anything 3D).

Make sure you're not running any kind of “screen saver”. Most screensavers are demonstrations of advanced video capabilities; they're huge battery drains. Make your screen go blank when you're not using it, and make sure the video card isn't forever refreshing some picture in the background.

Run PowerTOP to get an idea of what's using power on your system.

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Preventing battery from charging

There may be. Some 'proprietary' extensions which allow to operate on battery. For example tp-smapi patchset allows to set the maximum charging threshold for thinkpads. Setting it to 0 would prevent it from charging.

Some laptops may not have that possibility in BIOS so you need to post details about hardware to receive any details.

Linux – How to improve battery life in Fedora 15

The program powertop should help you identify the problem.

   $ sudo yum -y install powertop
   $ sudo powertop

Look at the various output, and then arrow-key over to the rightmost "tab", Tunables. Look at the things which are "bad", and press enter to fix them.

Also, on the first Overview screen, look for any egregiously bad processes that might be causing wake-ups.

Best Answer

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Preventing battery from charging

Linux – How to improve battery life in Fedora 15

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