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I am using Ubuntu family from 9.04 tile now 11.10.

I checked it's battery usage times and times and compared it with my windows.

In Ubuntu my battery get empty faster than windows.

At first, has any body else this problem or it is just for me?

And the second if it is true, what can we do to avoid this?

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3 Answers 3

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It is normal that laptops have a worse battery-time in Ubuntu. It's mainly because of the drivers you install; hardware companies control programs for drivers are (often) not open-source, so alternate versions are often worse. Also in Ubuntu 11.10 many battery-saving features are disabled because they don't work for some machines.

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  • Worth noting that when 12.04 is released, battery management will be improved and a kernel patch (for Linux) will also aid battery life.
    – BrownE
    Feb 17, 2012 at 18:42
  • I'm using the 12.04 alpha 2, and it's great. It's supposed to be a very stable release cycle, so if my suggestion in my answer doesn't work out for you, maybe you should consider upgrading. Feb 17, 2012 at 20:37
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You could config the rc.local in /etc and add the following line before the exit:

sudo rfkill block bluetooth

so you deacitvate Bluetooth automatically. And there is a good program named Granola which reduces the battery consumption by undervolting your laptop when you use him for smaller things. If you run programs, that needs the power it automatically make the CPU-Voltage fitting.

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  • does granola really undervolt processors? Isn't it just changing frequencies?
    – turbo
    May 20, 2012 at 21:04
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So people seem to ask this a lot. Here's a link to several helpful suggestions. Basically you need laptop-mode-tools. Just installing that will probably improve your power consumption. You can compare how your laptop was doing before and after installing that, by installing powertop first and making some observations for a time.

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