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Aaron Franke
Asked: 2016-10-23 19:52:23 +0800 CST

When Power Manager isn't handling something, what handles it?

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I'm Running Xubuntu 16.04 LTS 64-bit, but this is a general question.

In Power Manager, there's a checkbox for "Handle display power management". What handles display power management when this box is unchecked?

Additionally, what determines how the system behaves if I uncheck Power Manager from the Startup list? What determines what happens if the power or sleep buttons are pressed, if the battery is low, or if the system is idle for a long amount of time?

suspend

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Xubuntu uses XFCE desktop environment as default. So the power manger is more likely a xfce application which is called xfce4-power. You can read the official documentation of the specific preference for this app in here: http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-power-manager/preferences#display

    If you checked "Handle display power management" the box, you could deal with below three display options.

    Check Handle display power management to allow Power Manager to manage the laptop's display.

    The three options — Blank after, Put to sleep after and Switch off after — are theoretically in ascending order of power saving potential. However, not all laptop hardware is capable of making a distinction among these three modes and there is no direct indication on a laptop if the display is actually being turned off, suspended or just blanked. You may have to experiment to see which, if any, of these options yields the most power savings.

    Power Manager does assume that each of these options will work at the hardware level and so it attempts to prevent an illogical configuration; e.g., a Blank after period greater than a Put to sleep after one. In a setup like the one shown in the screenshot above, if you drag the On battery Put to sleep after slider down to, say, 5 minutes, the Blank after slider will automatically move to one minute less. Likewise, if you try to reduce the Switch off after period to less than the other two, it will move the other two sliders to one minute and two minutes less, respectively.

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