Would Ubuntu drain more battery?

[firstwave]

Hi, I have Ubuntu for desktop, so there's no battery issue. I am concerned about installing it on a laptop because I am not sure if there are ways like in Vista to reduce performance to increase battery life. Is this such a function?

Thanks

[frazell]

I'm going to guess that for now, at least, it would drain more battery power... Intel is nice to Open Source so maybe I'm a little out dated (provided the box is Intel; not sure how AMD fares) on this notion, but the UBubtu devs have to code and add enhanced power management stuff to take advantage of the latest power reducers in laptops...

You didn't say which laptop you had though so depends on its age Ububtu could be quite optimized for it

[chimpanzee]

Most likely than not. Understand Vista, my notebook spend most of its time in C3 state yet there is a powertop utility(incidentally by Intel linux team) which is used to locate offending programs to keep the CPU from this mode(and there are a lot).

So from a power management perspective, Vista/XP and Windows application in general is in a much better shape.

[speedking]

When I installed Ubuntu I was wondering the same question.
I gave it a shot and I have to tell you that there's no difference in battery performance when usuing Ubuntu.
However I was concerned for actually managing the power management and checked trough the Ubuntu's forums and found out that it comes Included with Ubuntu 7.04 , its automatic depending on applications you're running.

Im currently Using dual boot Vista & Ubuntu. I run Vista only when I need AutoCad, Photoshop and Video Editting Programs.
Most of the time when surfing, watching movies and listen music its Ubuntu.
tested on e1405 Core Duo / 1GB / 100GB / GMA950 / Intel 3945

[chimpanzee]

Originally Posted by speedking

its automatic depending on applications you're running.

That is the point. If you go over to the powertop mailing list, you would find a lot of discussion about offending applications which being written for *nix use all sorts of polling that prevents(or frequently wake up) the CPU from deep sleep state, as there is no one right way for doing this kind of event driven thing.

On the contrary, most applications on Windows use one single method for this kind of thing(Windows programming is even driven by nature) which plays nicely with dynamic CPU scaling.

[speedking]

However I noticed there's actually good power management in Kubuntu, allowing you to choose High Performance or Battery Save, since its automatic in Ubuntu I didnt test it in K*.
But its still very good, I expected very crappy and poor OS, so when installed I just love it. Cant find out why Linux is not so popular and why Notebook Companies doesnt offer it, like HP.

[chimpanzee]

It has nothing to do with the feature but how many offending applications you may want to use. As I said, if you want to know more, search powertop and read.

If you find it to be good, that means it meets you need but in general, linux so far still doesn't play nice with speedstep, which is the sole reason why Intel's team introduce powertop, to spot those naughty programs.

[null84]

umm every notebook i tried ubuntu tend to have less battery life than vista. Of course, xp have the best battery life. However, Ubuntu is always faster than vista and xp.

[Bog]

From my experiences with Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Mandriva, Linux consumes just as much power, not more; the thing is that, with the exception of Ubuntu, you will often have to work to get things like speedstep working.

[Fittersman]

...how would vista consume less battery than linux... its not going to happen. Vista consumes much more power than linux, even in battery saving mode.

so, i say get ubuntu on there to save battery. I know i have fedora on mine and i get upward of 30min+ extra battery life than in vista (vista i get like 1:20-1:30 and fedora gets me 2-2:10hours) i would say by the ratio im getting, that linux consumes far less battery power.

this could all depend on the hardware you are using though, so if i were you i would test it out