battery life : how does Fossa compare? + big impacts?

[ChrisFH]

In terms of battery life, how should FossaPup compare to normal "lightweight" distros like Lubuntu, or Ubuntu Mate? Similar? Much longer battery life? Shorter?

Also, what modifications to Puppy have big impacts on reducing battery life? Example: is adding a heavier browser like Firefox or TOR a big impact? language pack? etc

Are there any modifications that can be made to standard FossaPup that increase battery life significantly?

Thanks.

[dogcat]

Just take into consideration of what uses the battery on your device and disable or limit or eliminate power to those parts of the device that allow that adjustment.

Things that would use power may be a mechanical "spinning" hard drive and your display. You can boot fossapup from a usb stick and have the hdd power turned off completely if your system has enough ram where there is no need for a swap file. (for example to turn off drive sda you could use hdparm -Y /dev/sda in a script during boot or run that command manually.)

Also the screen may be able to be configured via the laptop controls to use less power.

Possibly reduce the speed of the processor.

[greengeek]

Are you concerned about battery life during running? Or are you concerned about battery life after shutdown? Modern hardware has a lot of "wakeups" specified in hardware and software - that consume battery life even while the hardware is "off". This results in the appearance of a weak battery - but these wakeups can sometimes be switched off so the battery does not decay so much between boots.

[ChrisFH]

Are you concerned about battery life during running? Or are you concerned about battery life after shutdown? Modern hardware has a lot of "wakeups" specified in hardware and software - that consume battery life even while the hardware is "off". This results in the appearance of a weak battery - but these wakeups can sometimes be switched off so the battery does not decay so much between boots.

Mostly, I am concerned about battery life while operating. Ideally, I would like to turn on my laptop in the morning with a full battery and not have to re-charge again until bedtime. (However, maybe this is unrealistic...) However, my living situation is such that I cannot leave my laptop running all the time. When not being used, it has to be shut down and stowed away. Therefore, battery life while off would be significant too. I will try to find info about "wakeups" on my own, but if you have any suggestion for an easy one to turn off that would help, please let me know!

[Jasper]

I found a Python script that might be useful to you.

Not test by me as I do not use a laptop.

[greengeek]

Therefore, battery life while off would be significant too. I will try to find info about "wakeups" on my own, but if you have any suggestion for an easy one to turn off that would help, please let me know!

First start by finding out what your laptop keeps "alive" after the machine shuts down. Enter this into a terminal and post the result:

Code: Select all

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup

Each of the "enabled" entries represents some piece of hardware that remains active (using battery power) even after you shutdown. (ie regardless of whether you selected shutdown, sleep or hibernate whatever).

[ChrisFH]

Code: Select all

cat /proc/acpi/wakeup

Each of the "enabled" entries represents some piece of hardware that remains active (using battery power) even after you shutdown. (ie regardless of whether you selected shutdown, sleep or hibernate whatever).

This is from my laptop running Lubuntu...

PEG0 S4 *disabled
PEGP S4 *disabled
PEG1 S4 *disabled
PEGP S4 *disabled
PEG2 S4 *disabled
PEGP S4 *disabled
RP01 S4 *disabled pci:0000:00:1c.0
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP02 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP03 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1c.2
PXSX S4 *disabled pci:0000:06:00.0
RP04 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1c.3
PXSX S4 *disabled pci:0000:07:00.0
RP05 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:1c.4
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP06 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP07 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP08 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
GLAN S4 *disabled
EHC1 S0 *enabled pci:0000:00:1d.0
EHC2 S0 *disabled
XHC S0 *enabled pci:0000:00:14.0
TPD4 S4 *disabled
TPD7 S0 *disabled
TPD8 S0 *disabled
HDEF S4 *disabled pci:0000:00:1b.0
LID0 S3 *enabled platform:PNP0C0D:00
PBTN S3 *enabled platform:PNP0C0C:00

This is from my other laptop, which has Windows installed but is currently running FossaPup...

HDAS S3 *disabled pci:0000:00:0e.0
PRT0 S4 *disabled no-bus:dev1.0
PRT1 S4 *disabled no-bus:dev2.0
XHC S0 *enabled pci:0000:00:15.0
XDCI S4 *disabled
RP01 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:14.0
PXSX S4 *disabled pci:0000:02:00.0
RP02 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP03 S4 *enabled pci:0000:00:13.0
PXSX S4 *disabled pci:0000:01:00.0
RP04 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP05 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
RP06 S4 *disabled
PXSX S4 *disabled
CNVW S4 *disabled
LID0 S3 *enabled platform:PNP0C0D:01
PBTN S3 *enabled platform:PNP0C0C:00

Question: on the laptop that runs Windows, if I changed anything while running FossaPup, would it revert once Windows was used again or make any problems for Windows?

[greengeek]

Question: on the laptop that runs Windows, if I changed anything while running FossaPup, would it revert once Windows was used again or make any problems for Windows?

I have read that Windows resets these wakeups exactly as it wants to. But I suspect it could depend on hardware and software so take care i guess.
I have been troubleshooting power issues on my Toshiba and in my case there is apparently a utility that switches off the usb ports so they cannot stay active after shutdown - but only Windows has access to that utility which means that shutting down Linux leaves the usb ports still consuming battery.

So I think Windows probably has better control than Fossa - there is more likelihood that Fossa will not be able to overcome what Windows does rather than the other way around.

[williams2]

If I changed anything while running FossaPup, would it revert once Windows was used again

If you hibernate MS Windows, you should not use the file system of the partitions that it is using,
The file system(s) are mounted and in use, Writing to the file systems can cause damage.
(similar to yanking out the power plug while copying large files to the file system)

If you reboot MS Windows, it will not hibernate (FastBoot is a form of hibernation, you need to disable FastBoot, in windows, not the FastBoot in the BIOS)

And if you hibernate Linux, you should not boot MS Windows.

Most of the time, Linux and MS Windows will play nicely together. if you corrupt the MS Windows system files, like the registry, or the boot UEHI files, etc etc, it's possible to do considerable damage to MS Windows file system.