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Ubuntu's Power Consumption Tested

Posted by kdawson on from the no-lyme-disease dept.

RedDragon writes "Ubuntu 7.10 is due out on Thursday, October 18, and in addition to desktop 3D effects, GNOME 2.20, and other features is the use of the Linux 2.6.22 kernel with the tick-less (CONFIG_NO_HZ) kernel feature. But does this mean enhanced power savings when compared to past Ubuntu releases? Phoronix tested Ubuntu power consumption looking back 2-1/2 years at the six Ubuntu releases from Ubuntu 5.04 to the yet-to-be-released Ubuntu 7.10. Testing was done when the system was idling and then under load, and when the Lenovo notebook was powered via the battery and then again with the AC adapter. The Pentium M CPU temperature was also monitored. While Ubuntu 7.10 does include the tick-less kernel feature, more daemons and processes running by default on these modern Ubuntu releases is actually causing an increase in power consumption."

7 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Snazzy effects by F-3582 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Rest assured, it takes you four mouse-clicks to disable them. Every tried that under Vista?

  2. misleading by wizardforce · · Score: 4, Informative

    very misleading healine. I RTFA and if you look at the nice graph, it actually shows a decrease in power usage since feisty and just about what the prior versions were. AC power consumption idling went from 31 to 29 from feisty to gutsy. while loaded, it went down slightly from 51 [feisty] to 50 [gutsy] the only thing that gutsy was higher in was battery discharge rate idle- it was at 22.26 while feisty was at 21.16. while loaded on battery it went down from 33.51 to 32.21 from feisty to gutsy.

    --
    Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
  3. AMD64 by Nimey · · Score: 4, Informative

    Laptop users may want to stick with 32-bit Ubuntu, since the CONFIG_NO_HZ (tickless kernel) option isn't available in 64-bit kernels yet.

    If you're feeling adventurous, patches here: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tglx/hrtimers/

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  4. Re: I can believe that by Dolda2000 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't know what it is there for, but according to this description, it doesn't sound like it is something that a vanilla, desktop installation would want on there. That's not the trackerd you're looking for, though (for future record: You may want to try dpkg -S /usr/bin/trackerd, followed by dpkg -s $PACKAGENAME to find out what it is). Trackerd in the latest Ubuntu is a desktop search thingie, similar to Spotlight or whatever the Vista thing is called. I'd imagine that the load you were seing after about ½-1 hour of use was that it was still busy indexing your preexisting files. Once it gets past that, it gets quite calm in my admittedly limited experience.

    The approach to background processes should be the KISS. On a vanilla desktop installation, only the barest set of such thing should be on there. If that's what you want, maybe you shouldn't be using Ubuntu?
  5. Re:Well duh! by Simon+(S2) · · Score: 4, Informative
    There is. http://www.xubuntu.org/

    It is lighter on system requirements and tends to be more efficient than Ubuntu with GNOME or KDE, since it uses the Xfce Desktop environment, which makes it ideal for old or low-end machines, thin-client networks, or for those who would like to get more performance out of their hardware.
    --
    I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
  6. Re:Is this supposed to be a surprise? by dpilot · · Score: 4, Informative

    The HPET stuff is now scheduled for merge into the 2.6.24 kernel. I've had to patch my earlier kernels to get HPET, which as you say is really necessary for tickless to do its stuff. The article suggests that this is a stock Gutsy installation. But then again, most distros do a bit of custom patching of their kernels. In particular, Gentoo does not include the HPET patch.

    So the question here: Does the Gutsy kernel have the HPET patch applied?

    If not, then these power numbers are definitely pessimistic, presuming that they move to an HPET kernel (2.6.24+) as it's available.

    Someone here with a Gutsy system should run "powertop" on it, and let us know. IIRC, powertop suggested that I use the HPET, and with a little digging I found that a patch was needed, and took care of it.

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  7. Re:Is this supposed to be a surprise? by SuperQ · · Score: 5, Informative

    Does this answer your question?

    $ grep HPET /boot/config-2.6.22-14-generic
    CONFIG_HPET=y
    CONFIG_HPET_MMAP=y
    # CONFIG_HPET_RTC_IRQ is not set
    CONFIG_HPET_TIMER=y
    CONFIG_HPET_EMULATE_RTC=y

    $ dmesg | grep hpet
    [ 8.328261] hpet0: at MMIO 0xfed00000, IRQs 2, 8, 0
    [ 8.328266] hpet0: 3 64-bit timers, 14318180 Hz
    [ 0.744000] Time: hpet clocksource has been installed.