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Asked: 2012-05-16 18:10:55 +0800 CST

Is Ubuntu Battery Management Better Than Windows?

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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 management in Ubuntu ? good / better / fine / bad ?

power-management battery 12.04

5 Answers

  1. In my experience power management in Linux is generally not as good on Linux as it is in Windows, because

    1. the hardware is designed to operate under Windows first
    2. it takes a lot of Linux developer effort to support all the different manufacturers
    3. manufacturers usually spend less time writing Linux drivers.

    HOWEVER this being said there is an exception to every rule, and it might just be the case that you are getting better battery life. However, I do not regard it as likely.

    The only way to be sure - for your particular make and model of laptop (they are all different) is to test it. Computer designs are so complex that no two will behave in the same manner in situations like this.

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  2. Best Answer

    I think battery management on Ubuntu is just fine. To improve it, however, you can install Jupiter. According to WebUpd8.Org,

    Jupiter is an appindicator (it now uses Python instead of Mono) designed to improve laptops / netbooks battery life. It can be used to switch between maximum, high performance and power saving modes, change the screen resolution and orientation, enable or disable bluetooth, touchpad, WiFi (if available) and so on. If you own an Asus EeePC netbook, there's also a separate package that adds support for Asus Super Hybrid Engine (SHE) as well as some other EeePC tweaks.

    To install Jupiter, enter the following commands:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/jupiter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install jupiter

    Source

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  3. With Jupiter, yes. And without Jupiter, no. I have tested it on my laptop. As far as I know (correct me if i am wrong) kernel 3.4 has got a solution for this problem.

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  4. It's much worse. On the other hand it's easier to improve it (using powertop for example) but still - I get 5-6 hours on Windows and 1 hour on Ubuntu (when I don't turn off additional card which is very hard to do) or 2-3 hours when I do turn off additional GPU.

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  5. In my experience, I installed Ubuntu Netbook edition on my ASUS eee1001px, and i saw my battery life go from about 45 minutes in Win7HP, to ~2.5 hours in Ubuntu.

    This was a GREAT improvement on the windows power management.

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