Mobile Users Beware: Linux Has Major Power Regression

[Raven3x7]

It boggles the mind how after so many years the rest of the world is still trying to catch up to OS X's power management. You would think in this day and age that it would be common knowledge how to do it properly and not be some black obelisk.

Only having to deal with specific hardware that you control might have something to do with it

[allquixotic]

If you are going to clarify do it properly. Ubuntu is a linux distribution, it is not however "linux".

If you are going to clarify by clarifying someone else's clarification, do it properly. Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution, it is not (merely) however a "linux distribution".

This is in jest, BTW: we could go on forever and list every possible software package:

Ubuntu is a GNU/LibreOffice/GNOME/KDE/LXDE/FLTK/FVWM/Unity/Mono/OpenJDK/Firefox/PulseAudio/.................../Linux distribution.

[not.sure]

Good! Still on 2.6.37 for power consumption (/fan/heat) reasons. So it's not just me.

[chronniff]

I've been using 2.6.38 for a while now. On my desktop which is running maverick, and and also on my laptop which is running natty so Icould test out unity. I have stuck with 2.6.38 because I have noticed decent latency improvements. While I agree as far a throughput is concerned things don't seem much different, could the various factors improving latency be causing the increase in power usage? Possibly more acpi wakeup events? I have noticed kworker process threads popping up in my conky top 5 cpu usage threads quite frequently.

[Givrix]

I think power consumption is not obtained from hardware but calculated by ACPI. It's rather simple mathematics, but it could be the algorithm has been changed in between.
If you could try a full battery emptying between, let's say 2.6.37 and 2.6.38 we could be sure about the reported consumption.

[Nobu]

Yeah, there have been a few lm-sensors updates recently (3.2.0 in October last year, and 3.3.0 in march of this year). Has one been pulled in recently? That could be a possible explanation. (in addition to whatever driver changes may have occurred at about the same time)

[lem79]

+1 to idea of more wakeups on newer Ubuntu, that was my first thought too. Haven't tried Natty on my old AMD laptop yet though.

[deanjo]

Ubuntu is a GNU/Linux distribution, it is not (merely) however a "linux distribution".

Not according to GNU,

http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
http://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html

Ubuntu GNU/Linux

Ubuntu provides specific repositories of nonfree software, and Canonical expressly promotes and recommends nonfree software under the Ubuntu name in some of their distribution channels. Ubuntu offers the option to install only free packages, which means it also offers the option to install nonfree packages too. In addition, the version of Linux included in Ubuntu contains firmware blobs.
Ubuntu's trademark policy prohibits commercial redistribution of exact copies of Ubuntu, denying an important freedom.

[not.sure]

Yeah, there have been a few lm-sensors updates recently (3.2.0 in October last year, and 3.3.0 in march of this year). Has one been pulled in recently? That could be a possible explanation. (in addition to whatever driver changes may have occurred at about the same time)

I looked into the commits for the temperature sensor parts and could not find anything that would affect my system (but I can't be 100% sure of course). Would have to be off by 2-3 degrees from 2.6.37 to 2.6.38 while the temps of the air coming out of the vent didn't change. So my 2.6.38 is most likely really burning through more power.

[glisse]

It boggles the mind how after so many years the rest of the world is still trying to catch up to OS X's power management. You would think in this day and age that it would be common knowledge how to do it properly and not be some black obelisk.

It seems you have no clue of what the real world is about. All laptop manufacturer only care about making their product work on windows and for that they do tons of quirks in the driver instead of fixing their bios & acpi, so their driver endup with a tons of special tweak specific to one model and one model only.

Apple does the same, they control the hardware and the software but most of the time they do a tons of quirk inside the operating system to improve how it works, i have seen some of the osx kernel and it's populated with special path for each specific hardware, it's a mess.

Linux kernel on the other end try to do cleanly in a generic way, and on that front i am sure linux is a good contender. Of course in real world people have crap hardware with crap acpi and crappier bios, but there is just not enough resource to go after all the hardware out there and fine tune each of them.