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Thinkpad T42 battery life

S

sigs3gv

Senior member
Are there any differences in battery life between Linux and Windows? (assuming both operating systems are running on the same computer with same settings)
 
I wouldn't know...depends on what type of power management options Linux supports which I have no idea.
 
I don't think that Linux gets quite as good battery life; but it depends on a number of fiddly options. For example, on my machine, the Xorg free driver for the mobile Radeon 9600(M10) doesn't enable dynamic clocks on the GPU by default. The 9600 isn't a huge beast; but those watts count. The xorg.conf tweak is quick and easy; but I'd been running Linux for something like 10 months before I heard about it. Even with that setting on, I've heard tell that the binary driver has the best power managment(but I don't mess with that scum, so I don't know personally).

Battery life would also depend on which CPU governer you have set in the kernel and, if userspace, what the daemon is up to. HDparm settings would also be a factor, as would the presence or absence of various background daemons, logging setups, cronjobs, etc.

As I said, my general impression is that Linux power managment isn't as good as Windows(although the gap isn't huge, and has gotten better); but the specifics can vary sharply.
 
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