Other Ways To Optimize Your Linux Battery Life

After writing recently about the PowerTOP 2.6 release and mentioning that some new power consumption/efficiency tests were in the works at Phoronix, a few readers wrote in asking about other ways to extend their battery life under Linux.

While the power efficiency of Linux on desktop/laptop systems is improving, overall it still doesn't appear to be on par with Windows 8 or OS X systems, especially when it comes to the "out of the box" power performance as shipped by default. PowerTOP is one of the easiest ways to drop your Linux power usage, but for those curious about other measures, here's some other common yet useful resources for new Linux users to make their systems more power efficient:

- The useful ThinkWiki.org site has a page on reducing power consumption. While ThinkWiki is mostly concerned about ThinkPads on Linux, the information shared on that Wiki page apply for the most part to other laptops.

- There's many power-saving suggestions on the always very useful Arch Linux Wiki. Like ThinkWiki, even if you're not an Arch Linux user, the information still is rather relevant to Linux users as a whole.

- There's also a few tips on the Ubuntu Wiki for some particular notebooks, but again they are rather broad suggestions that work for other hardware too.

If you have any other Linux power saving tips, feel free to comment on this article within the forums. My latest Linux power impact tests from PowerTOP will be out in the next few days.