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Longer Laptop Battery Life under Linux
ThinkingInBinary writes "Want easier power management and better battery life on your Linux laptop? Try powermgr, a daemon that automatically (or manually, if you choose) switches your system between power "profiles". It has support for ACPI (of course) as well as Asus, Dell, IBM, Omnibook, and Toshiba extensions. It can control CPU governor, screen brightness, wireless card, laptop mode (via services), runlevel, services, and more, and can switch based on AC adapter and battery state, load average, temperature, running processes, and more. Tests indicate that it can prolong battery life by 20 minutes to almost two hours, depending on what the system is doing. Try it out!"
It still has some issues with it being set to run or not. I run this on my ubuntu setup for my IBM T43 and if you unplug the laptop and plug it back in, it thinks it is still unplugged. Thus, the screen turns off after set ammount of time, etc. etc. (which I prefer to be always on if it's plugged in). And changing it's settings are buggy.
It does get me over 3 hours of battery life, however, with my centrino processor which I really can't complain about. And with full brightness I still get 2 hours so long as I'm not doing any gaming or anything (DVD = over 2 hours low brightness)