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Ubuntu's Power Consumption Tested
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."
I'm confused - don't computers now use more power then they used to? Because of new software and being able to do more powerful things?
I mean - Vista will use more power than Windows XP, OS X will use more power than Mac OS 9.
Or is there a fundamental flaw in my logic that I'm missing here?
As cool as these Compiz effects are, they should not be forced upon everyone, just made very easy for people to obtain.
Plus, this version never actually booted up because it didn't like my Broadcom 4318.
I'd be more interested in seeing how Ubuntu's power consumption stacks up against Windows and MacOS...
Although each newer system does more ... they've also improved the code so that it does so more efficiently. Or in the case of the tick-less kernel, other code has changed.
... but still uses more power than even earlier releases did.
So, the question is: Do the improvements offset the additional features.
The answer is: Yes, to a degree. 7.10beta runs cooler and more efficiently than 7.04
So the next question is: How many of the new features can you shut off because you do not need them and how much of a power savings will you see then?
1. Run the particular distro.
2. Make sure the power cord is long and in the open.
3. Allow a penguin to chew through the cord.
4. Measure the distance the penguin flies after chewing into the cord. This will give you some idea of the power usage.
5. Well, don't let that penguin go to waste! BBQ and teriyaki are great ways to make penguin. Personally, I prefer General Tso's Penguin myself.
TFA doesn't specify error bars, which of course makes the results somewhat dubious. They list numbers to two decimal place accuracy (e.g. 48.00), but since all the numbers end in .00, I'm guessing those decimal places are not significant. In other words, the number are only good to within +/- 1 or +/- 2 or something like that. Considering that they are trying to compare numbers that are quite similar (27 to 33), their conclusions may not be reliable.
When comparing numbers, an estimate of the error is crucial. If the difference between two measurements is smaller than the error, then you cannot meaningfully say they are different.
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.
toast, still not free
-Reid
Actually, I think it is rather impressive that 7.10 (which has eye candy on by default) has slightly less power consumption than 7.04 (no eye candy by default).
In other words, they increased features while decreasing (generally) power consumption. While it seems to be only about 1 or 2 watts lower (excepting battery idle where it is slightly higher), we are only talking 3-5 watts difference over 2.5 years of updates. In fact, it went down 4 watts using ac idle compared to 5.04, which I am sure had far fewer daemons/features.
Some of this may be better code etc. However, I think we should be giving the people who have been doing the coding here major Kudos for doing getting the most out of our computers (whereas MS wants us to quadruple our ram to use eye candy, they are doing it with the same amount of ram standard 4 years ago on a desktop, and keeping power down). I don't even want to think of what Vista must use in power.
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
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Ubuntu certainly isn't windows. That is why you can open the package manager and purge most of the stuff that you find bloated, or use Xubuntu, which is designed to have lower requirements yet still be easy to use. Or if you REALLY want to streamline your system you could install a distro with that purpose, like DSL or Feather Linux. If that is too limited for your needs you could grab a minimal debian install and only install the packages you want.
My point? Different users have different needs. Ubuntu is explicitly targeted and those people who WANT an easy to use GUI and those people who WANT painless support for things they expect to just work. Making an operating system which caters to those users is the main purpose of the Ubuntu project. If your main priority is a streamlined system, then quite frankly you should be looking at something targeted at that rather than complaining about Ubuntu. Besides, it is not as if Ubuntu doesn't run just fine on moderate hardware. I'm using the Gutsy beta on a 5+ year old workstation my dad's job threw out because it was "old" as an example.
I've got an older system here... I built it roughly 5 years ago (I think -- I may be over-estimating). It's an AMD Athlon XP 2500+, 1GB OEM RAM, 120GB SATA Hard drive, and an Nvidia FX 5200 video card (I think)...
:-)
I used to run SuSE 9.1 and was running it fine for 3 years or so... then came time to try and upgrade to a newer version. Of course this is right around the time that Novell bought SUSE and changed it up a bit. So an easy upgrade was indeed not possible. I decided to try out a few distributions but had a lot of problems finding one that would work fast and I ended up on Gentoo. I know, I know, compile time was a pain in the ass... I decided to go down the XFCE route and use all of the lighter-weight GTK programs... I think I only have one QT program that I actually use installed and it only depends on QT, nothing else.
Xubuntu ran O.K... but not anywhere near as nice as Gentoo is. I think it's not the fact that it was compiled and optimized... I beleive it's because during installation I learned more as I set it up. And I knew what I wanted/needed to run the system. Whereas Ubuntu makes a lot of choices for you, mostly in system services, etc. I have a total of 29 items that start up when I boot. I think only 10-15 of them are actually daemons. Right now I am using 215MB or so of my 1GB of RAM... this is with Firefox (4 tabs), Thunderbird w/Lightning, aMSN, Terminal, Mousepad and a whole slew of items on my panel.
If you want lightweight, make sure you know exactly what is going on your system. And use something like XFCE or Fluxbox versus KDE or Gnome.
Just my two cents.
Given that the stock Ubuntu (if you don't include "restricted drivers") comes with FULL source code, yes, all of them.
On a more realistic note, most people do need restricted drivers, and most people don't want to mess around with source code. But it's based on Debian, which means, for the most part, you can completely remove services you don't need, point and click, provided you know what they are.
Then again, I actually do want most of these services -- for example, the parts that make everything plug'n'play, from USB storage to wireless, even the CD "autorun" feature of Windows if you really want it. Most users won't have to think about "mounting" any more than they do on Windows, and somewhat more than they might on OS X, and that's a good thing.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!