Questions about battery usage and issues in Ubuntu.
89
votes
23answers
32k views
Tips to extend battery life for laptops and notebooks
It is possible to greatly extend the usage time of a laptop or netbook running on battery by disabling various services and installing various packages.
What tricks or tips do people have for ...
35
votes
2answers
972 views
How to get the “Your battery is broken” message to go away?
Everytime I turn on my computer, I see a message saying something like:
Your battery may be old or broken. Etc...
I know my battery is not working. How can I make the message go away?
24
votes
4answers
10k views
Why does my computer get less battery life with Ubuntu compared to Windows?
Last year I purchased a Dell Inspiron 5315 laptop shipping with Windows 7 preinstalled. I installed Ubuntu 10.10 alongside it with dual-booting. On upgrading to Ubuntu 11.10, I was upset to find I now ...
21
votes
3answers
4k views
Jupiter or similar power saving app for 13.04?
I have installed the 13.04 final release and so far I am loving it more 12.10. I'm trying to install the Jupiter power settings app but, I read it is no longer compatible with the new kernel. Is there ...
20
votes
5answers
5k views
OUCH! Laptop running SUPER HOT after 12.10 upgrade!
I was running 12.04 with Unity 3D for 6 months; my laptop ran almost silently and cool enough to hold on my lap with ~4 hours of battery life. I updated to 12.10 and switched to the Gnome 3 Shell. Now ...
17
votes
0answers
10k views
Battery life decreased after upgrade to 11.04 [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why does my computer get less battery life with Ubuntu compared to Windows?
After upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10, my battery life has decreased dramatically.
There was a ...
16
votes
4answers
7k views
Laptop battery life drastically decreased compared to Windows 7 [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why does my computer get less battery life with Ubuntu compared to Windows?
I am running Ubuntu 10.10 on my Dell Studio XPS 1640 and have about one hour of battery life ...
15
votes
4answers
17k views
How to check battery status using terminal?
I would like a command that check the battery status through the terminal
"acpi" does not work for 11.10.
12
votes
3answers
9k views
How can I limit battery charging to 80% capacity?
I just learned that some Lenovo laptops include a utility that offers to limit battery charging capacity to within 0–80% in order to slow the attenuation of the battery lifespan:
How can I do this ...
10
votes
2answers
4k views
How to get the correct battery status?
At this moment, ever since I installed Ubuntu on this machine, the battery status says: not present.
Looking at this answer, however, I find that /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/info (sometimes its ...
10
votes
0answers
4k views
Battery drain on ubuntu is fast [duplicate]
My battery drain on win7 is less than that of ubuntu (around 45 min of difference).
Can you advice me something to get best battery performance on my laptop?
when I decrease the brightness it remains ...
9
votes
2answers
5k views
Increase screen idle dim timeout
On Ubuntu 11.10, when on battery, the screen dims after 10 seconds of inactivity. This is annoying because it is too short. Is there anyway to increase this timeout?
I know I can disable it, but ...
8
votes
6answers
7k views
Can I set the power indicator to show battery percentage instead of time remaining?
It's great that the indicator applet tells me I have 2 hours and 12 minutes of battery left, or that it will be charged in 1 hour 8 minutes, but I might well change my pattern of usage during that ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views
Dual Boot: Ubuntu using 3 times more battery than Leopard?
Just a quick question: I have noticed when I boot into Ubuntu my battery goes empty faster, and checking the "time left" option in Leopard and Ubuntu it says Mac will last 3 hours where Ubuntu will ...
8
votes
3answers
2k views
Kernel patch that solves battery issues when for ubuntu ? [closed]
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTAxNDM
When will this come for ubuntu ?
I am getting tired with my 11.10 dieing at little over 50 minutes of battery when at the most extreme ...
8
votes
5answers
859 views
How to see the discharge rate of the battery
Maybe this question was made earlier but I can't find it. I want to see a terminal command or gui program that can show me the discharge rate of the battery. What hardware parts or programs are using ...
8
votes
3answers
1k views
System shows “Battery Critically low”
I am using Ubuntu 11.10 on VAIO . Whenever I unplug the charger from my laptop, there comes a dialog showing "battery critically low" and system suspends, even when the charge is 100%.
8
votes
2answers
5k views
How to charge the battery till 60-80% only?
I just got my laptop's battery replaced and read a bit about how to prolong it's life. Most people say that the best choice is not to charge it will 100%, but rather to 60-80%. My battery is quite ...
7
votes
2answers
4k views
Battery Critically Low at 85%?
I, along with many others, have been experiencing a problem with our Ubuntu 11.10 installations on our battery-powered laptop devices: The computer misreads information from the battery, so it thinks ...
7
votes
1answer
3k views
How to change critically low battery value?
I would like my laptop to hibernate itself when the battery level is 10% to be sure it has enough power to complete the operation properly. Actually if I don't pay attention my laptop informs me it ...
7
votes
4answers
845 views
Suspend when critically low power 11.10
Is there a way to suspend when Ubuntu is at critically low power. The only option in Ubuntu 11.10 power setting is to shutdown or hibernate. I run my battery all the way down till it suspends then i ...
6
votes
2answers
4k views
Is there any utility to check whether my laptop battery is in healthy condition or not?
Is there any utility available on Ubuntu to check whether laptop battery is in healthy condition or not?
6
votes
4answers
867 views
Is Ubuntu better on battery than other OS's?
nothing really to say here, except it would be cool to get some examples on what OS's might save me battery life and if you have any suggestions on apps that would save battery on ubuntu that would be ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
where did /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/XXX go in 12.10?
I use some custom scripts that use and monitor the battery information that was in:
/proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/(state|info)
However, since upgrading to 12.10 I no longer have those files and I've been ...
6
votes
1answer
6k views
Battery indicator missing in gnome classic
I had upgraded to ubuntu 12.04 from Ubuntu 11.10 and I am also using gnome classic. But the Battery indicator is Missing in the taskbar. So i followed the link ...
6
votes
1answer
738 views
Always be 100% bright when I'm using battery
When I'm using battery only - Ubuntu turns in some mode, when If I do not use my PC for about 5-10 seconds - the screeen becomes darker.
Where do turn this option off? Because I often need to read ...
6
votes
2answers
529 views
Where are the battery graphs?
Once upon a time, when I went to the battery icon on my netbook, I could get it to show me interesting graphs of the battery state, and how it had changed over time.
Nowadays, in this time of decay, ...
6
votes
1answer
699 views
How can I increase time of working from my battery?
Usually I am not even able to watch film from start to end.
I use Acer Aspire 5930
OS is Ubuntu 11.04
I use Classic Ubuntu desktop (AFAIK it really means GNOME2)
I know, that:
I can decrease ...
6
votes
2answers
1k views
Laptop immediately suspends when going onto battery power
I've got an MSI Wind, model U100 that's been running Ubuntu without trouble for a long while. After upgrading to 10.04 a few months ago, I've had this strange problem. As soon as I unplug the laptop ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
Battery icon changed?
I don't know what happened, but today when I logged in to Ubuntu 12.04, the battery icon looked strange (when unplugged):
When it's plugged, the icon looks as always been, the problem is when it's ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
How to prevent battery from charging while on UPS
I'm running on UPS power and would like to prevent the laptop's battery from charging, to increase the amount of power available to other devices. Is there a way to do this?
update
The machine is a ...
6
votes
3answers
600 views
laptop-mode-tools and harddrive spinoff
So I wanted to extend my laptop battery life. After googleing a lot I found many tips and tricks. Some even in this site as well. Then I found this package in synaptic as well laptop-mode-tools. Now I ...
6
votes
0answers
1k views
Can not estimate remaining battery time? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Laptop's battery is stuck on “estimating”?
After updating to Ubuntu 10.10 from 10.04 Ubuntu can not estimate both the battery time and the percentage ...
5
votes
5answers
5k views
Is Ubuntu Battery Management Better Than Windows?
Is Ubuntu battery management better than Windows ?
I have noticed that in Windows 7 a fully charged battery shows 3:30 minutes but in Ubuntu it shows 2:00 hours ... !!!
so what is the power ...
5
votes
5answers
2k views
Application to display battery info
First of all, I am not sure the title of this question is the most appropriate however this is what I meant to say,
There are many ways to extend the life of a laptop battery. One way is by not ...
5
votes
5answers
4k views
Battery indicator is stuck on “estimating”?
After installing Ubuntu 10.10, the battery indicator worked fine (both percent remaining and estimation on time). I then installed and configured some software (Skype, Pidgin, Thunderbird, removed ...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
How can I see more battery info when using Gnome shell?
I've been using Gnome Shell on Ubuntu 11.10 and I've been fairly satisfied. One thing that I really wish was different though is the battery icon. I can't tell by glancing at it what my battery ...
5
votes
3answers
6k views
Poor battery life in Ubuntu 12.10 on Toshiba p755-s5215, how can i manage background applications?
I have a dual-booted laptop, where windows gives a good 3.5 hours on battery, while on Ubuntu 12.10 my laptops runs only for 2 hours.
I heard about powertop and laptop-tools, but after installing ...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
Where do I set use_time_for_policy?
Where do i find the "use_time_for_policy" fix in ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot?
This post fixed it before.
Laptop immediately suspends when going onto battery power
I installed dconf-tools ...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
Battery not detected
As the title say my laptop battery is not detected in maverick.
I'm using ubuntu since ever and I've never come across this problem.
I have a msi ms-171f vr705 series and everything is working fine ...
5
votes
1answer
285 views
Is there a way to force a specific file to exist in RAM only?
I like this suggestion of mounting a tmpfs at /var/log in order to reduce disk writes.
Is there any way to do something similar for just a single file such as ~/.xsession-errors?
My incentive for ...
5
votes
1answer
716 views
How to check charged percentage of battery and to adjust its thresholds?
I was wondering how to check the current charged percentage of
battery on my Lenovo T400?
I forgot which program I used to control the battery to stop
charging at 60% and start charging at 40%.
Now ...
5
votes
2answers
814 views
How to stop turning off sequence when power manager says that battery is too low and want to power down?
According to this thread I can disable this thing altogether but this battery-critical-power-down not always happens. Is there a way or terminal command that can stop the power manager shutting down ...
5
votes
3answers
4k views
Brand new battery is 100% charged but at 0% capacity
I just bought a brand new battery to replace one that had seemingly died. I followed the instructions that came with the battery and charged it overnight, then ran my computer on battery until it was ...
5
votes
2answers
911 views
Battery information on Fluxbox
How can I get my battery info (percentages) on Fluxbox?
I've heard of the gnome-power-manager, and wanted to use that, but there seems to be a problem...
$ gnome-power-manager
gnome-power-manager: ...
5
votes
1answer
793 views
My Thinkpad X201 battery is draining extra fast. What can I do?
I got a new Thinkpad X201 last week with the 6 cell battery, which is advertised to work for 5 hours. I installed Ubuntu Maverick on this machine right away. My battery life is only around 2 hours. Is ...
5
votes
2answers
1k views
Battery Indicator shows wrong percentage [closed]
Anyone have any idea what's going on with the percentage? (I wish my laptop was that awesome...)
5
votes
1answer
96 views
I bought a new battery and Ubuntu 12.10 isn't recognizing it
I inherited my mom's old laptop and installed Ubuntu over top of Vista, so now it is purely Ubuntu.
Her old battery only lasted about 10 minutes, so it had to be plugged in all the time, which I ...
5
votes
1answer
2k views
Is there a tweak to show a percentage in the battery icon? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Can I set the power indicator to show battery percentage instead of time remaining?
I'm use to not having to click on the battery icon to see what my battery percentage ...
4
votes
4answers
1k views
Battery loading state on commandline?
Sometimes the energy status applet on my gnome panel suddenly disappears.
Is there a simple command to print loading state of the battery at commandline?
