Can Ubuntu Linux Consume Less Power Than Windows?

An anonymous reader writes "Now that the big Linux kernel power regression has been solved it looks like Ubuntu 11.04 can compete with Microsoft Windows 7 in terms of overall power usage. New tests revealed by Phoronix show the power consumption of Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Windows 7 operating systems. On a range of different systems, the power consumption of the Linux OS was comparable to that of Windows except for a few select workloads and systems."

Comments

Yes it can.

[mswhippingboy]

Any more questions?

Re:Yes it can.

[nemasu]

MacGyver??
Heck, even if your battery did by chance run out, you could probably just make one from some gum, a few lemons and a couple pieces of metal.

Re:Yes it can.

[carpenoctem63141]

Yeah, but if you don't have it, your only other option is to kick ass.

Re:Yes it can.

[gstoddart]

(Oh, and to enter extra pedantic mode: Of course, power cannot be consumed. :-))

Yeah, but my power bill doesn't have a line item for "energy provided for conversion into another form".

So, for purposes of discussion, the heat, light and mechanical action it turns into is "consumption".

Re:Yes it can.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I want the lemon battery to stick to the laptop I do.

Re:Yes it can.

[Dishevel]

What do you use to attach the wires to the electrodes?

Re:Yes it can.

[Surt]

No, it can't.

I swallowed a battery earlier today, and I think that proves you wrong. Also, grrrkfa;dlsjdkafjsdiedjiruacvnc

Re:Yes it can.

[SnarfQuest]

Why would you use meat in a battery?

Oops, misread metal... but a meat battery still sounds like something good for a zombie movie.

Re:Yes it can.

[maxwell demon]

(Oh, and to enter extra pedantic mode: Of course, power cannot be consumed. :-))

Yeah, but my power bill doesn't have a line item for "energy provided for conversion into another form".

So, for purposes of discussion, the heat, light and mechanical action it turns into is "consumption".

However, I guess you are billed kWh (i.e. energy), not kW (i.e. power).

Re:Yes it can.

[maxwell demon]

(Oh, and to enter extra pedantic mode: Of course, power cannot be consumed. :-))

Yeah, but my power bill doesn't have a line item for "energy provided for conversion into another form".

So, for purposes of discussion, the heat, light and mechanical action it turns into is "consumption".

Oh, and before I forget it. You don't pay them for consumption, you pay them for delivery. You still have to pay them immediately if you put the energy into a battery for later use.

Re:Yes it can.

[maxwell demon]

No, it can't.

I swallowed a battery earlier today, and I think that proves you wrong. Also, grrrkfa;dlsjdkafjsdiedjiruacvnc

You are Ubuntu Linux?

Re:Yes it can.

[gstoddart]

Oh, and before I forget it. You don't pay them for consumption, you pay them for delivery. You still have to pay them immediately if you put the energy into a battery for later use.

Again, ignoring the technical specifics of "power" vs "energy" ... from their perspective, if you pull in the power to put it into a battery, it's consumption. The fact that it's available for later use is largely irrelevant.

If I buy a gallon of gas and put it into a red plastic can, that doesn't mean that from the pump perspective, I didn't just 'consume' a gallon of gas.

However, I'm glad to see that the fine tradition of pedantry here on Slashdot is being upheld. ;-)

Re:Yes it can.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

...but a meat battery still sounds like something good for a zombie movie

That reminds me of a nickname we had for your mom....

Re:Yes it can.

[maxwell demon]

However, I'm glad to see that the fine tradition of pedantry here on Slashdot is being upheld. ;-)

Well, if you answer to some sentence explicitly marked as extra pedantic, and effectively complain about it being pedantic, what do you expect?

Re:Yes it can.

[Tsingi]

It depends on what you are there for.

Re:Yes it can.

[gstoddart]

Well, if you answer to some sentence explicitly marked as extra pedantic, and effectively complain about it being pedantic, what do you expect?

I expect nothing less than the high quality pedantry I've come to expect from Slashdot over the years.

And you haven't disappointed. ;-)

Re:Yes it can.

[Belial6]

I would go for that except that at least here in CA, if you put the electricity back, they don't charge you. They only charge you if you don't return it.

So then, the answer...

[DBNickel]

is no?

"Can" is not "Does"

[Kagetsuki]

It is possible it could consume less power, but that doesn't necessarily mean it always does. Different hardware, specialty drivers, default settings vs tweaked settings - come on?

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[vlm]

Different hardware, specialty drivers, default settings vs tweaked settings...

Virus, worm, and trojan installs on the windows box ....

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[Noughmad]

Could you tell us what kind of hardware do you have and what software do you use?

I'm really interested, because my new HP ProBook can barely run 2 hours on battery on Linux with a light load, but the specs said 4-4.5 hours. Now I know they're lying and that I could stretch the life by totally dimming the screen, but I doubt they would claim twice the battery life. It was even worse before I installed the proprietary graphics driver by AMD, so I presume there are some bad drivers here. On the other hand, my girlfriends ThinkPad Edge with an AMD processor easily playes compressed video for about three hours. She's running Kubuntu while I have Arch, both with KDE desktop. Unfortunately, neither of us have Windows installed so I can't compare with that, and I don't feel like installing Windows just to test battery life.

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[cpricejones]

From personal experience (my Toshiba laptop), I noticed that Ubuntu consumed more power than windows Vista (based on how long the battery would last). I tried to tweak both of them to run on more optimal settings for battery life. I probably did a poorer job tweaking the Ubuntu settings though due to my own lack of experience with the OS. This was running the same basic programs in both OSes (office programs like powerpoint/word and the openoffice equivalents, mozilla/firefox with lots of tabs open)--not particularly taxing on the CPU IMO but a fair measure of what I actually use my laptop for. Important to say again that this was Vista, not 7. So, even my attempts to optimize did not succeed on the part of Ubuntu in what I consider to be a fair assessment from a beginner to moderately skilled user.

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[Anonymous Coward]

arch doesn't have cpufreq set up by default, try setting the ondemand or conservative governor and you will get better battery life.

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[gl4ss]

the programs that run are which matter as long as there's not any crazy showstopper bugs that just don't let things sleep as well in either os. and the programs aren't that different, despite the old gentoo joke about some guy who was pimping on forums how he had built his firefox without ps/2 keyboard support.

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[Noughmad]

Thanks, I started reading into it and found this, right on the KDE page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE#How_to_enable_Cpufreq_based_power_saving

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[Belial6]

OT: If you want burn your eyes out, try looking at a Mac for a week. My PC was having heat problems, so I have been working on a Mac for the last week. I am truly shocked at how bad the font rendering is on the thing. I'm sure they wanted to make sure that all of the fonts all looked smooth. Unfortunately, they smoothly blur between letters.

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[Kagetsuki]

I get really clean font rendering actually (using Ubuntu and Compiz). There's a tool to change how the fonts are rendered as well but I haven't really touched it - the settings are all defaults. What are you comparing to?

Re:"Can" is not "Does"

[jones_supa]

Now I know they're lying and that I could stretch the life by totally dimming the screen, but I doubt they would claim twice the battery life.

Oh, it isn't even rare that manufacturers claim inflated runtimes for batteries. Many times they are reported of ideal conditions, like having screen dimmed down and the machine just idling. I'm not saying that your Linux might still not be wasting power.

Can it crash less often than Windows?

[spiffmastercow]

Ever since I upgraded my netbook to Ubuntu 11.04, it crashes randomly and often. I'm talking more that Windows 95 with no patches. Hell, more than Windows 3.0. While solving power management would be nice, it's a moot point if the computer is always off because I can never use it.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[jgtg32a]

Define crash? Random apps crashing, the UI crashing, or a full blow reboot required (assuming the system isn't doing it on its own)

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[vbraga]

I've had a few kernel panics (UI freezes and caps lock lights keeps blinking) since I upgraded to 11.04. It doesn't happens when I'm running Windows.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[RedACE7500]

Try reinstalling Wind^H^H^H^HUbuntu.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Kjella]

Since there's no telling if you have the same model or even brand of network, this conversation is a bit like "The fruit I ate had a hard shell, I almost cracked a tooth" "Mine didn't, perhaps your fruit was defective?" It's another easy way to blame something else, because how many have spare identical netbooks to rule that out? Sure it could happen, but it's far from the most likely explanation.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Andy Dodd]

11.04 seems to include a kernel with LOTS of regressions, or the Ubuntu maintainers added some to the kernel/modules packages.

For example, the wireless drivers for Ralink RT2860 chipsets were rock solid from 9.04 to 10.10, but were completely broken after an 11.04 update. Even after doing some module blacklist magic, the wireless drivers now perform horrifically and fail to connect very often.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[erroneus]

You know seriously, I used to have crashing problems like pretty much everyone else but two things have changed:

1. My use of Windows is limited to "what I need." I don't install crap of any kind. If I don't use it, it doesn't get installed or will soon be removed if it was there.
2. Windows uptimes have increased for me over the years. Perhaps it's all the bug fixes and what have you, but whatever the case, I don't have as many problems. (Other users, however, still seem to have the same problems, so it's not all to Microsoft's credit.)

As far as Ubuntu on a netbook? Look to the quality of your hardware. I have run Ubuntu netbook edition without problems at all.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[ngileadi]

Well, I don't know what problem spiffmastercow had, but this bug has been around since the launch of 11.04, and crashes my laptop on a regular basis.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Stewie241]

Would be interested to know how you did updates. I always had problems with insufficient space to install the updates and such. Is there a trick?

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Pausanias]

It may not be the hardware. Non-LTS Ubuntus are full of regressions. Affects some significant minority of users, but not enough to affect ship date.

The worst regressions are always fixed in the next release. They are rarely backported to non-LTS, a strategy which is designed to keep you constantly upgrading. Except that once one regression is fixed, more creep up. If you're lucky, your won't be affected. But there are ALWAYS regressions.

I basically treat non-LTS Ubuntus as betas for the LTS. I don't expect them to work. I expect many things to be broken. Many of the regressions are insidious---you don't discover them until later in the game. And, dirty secret is that once LTS is long in the tooth, only security updates get backported to LTS. Got a non-functioning file open dialog? Too bad, not going to backport the fix to LTS, you can rot in hell or upgrade. (read the final few comments, where the dev tells me I need to upgrade from LTS to non-LTS to get back a functioning file open dialog box.)

Bitter much? Yes I am, for a fan that's been with them for 7 years now.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[MrEricSir]

And while that shouldn't happen at all, at least with Ubuntu you can often recover from such a state by switching to a terminal and restarting Compiz and/or X. Not the case with Windows.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[spiffmastercow]

Alright.. It's an Asus EeePC 1001H with the dual SSDs (4GB fast SSD, 16GB slooooooow SSD). Worked great on 10.10. Now it hangs every 5 minutes, and drops connection to the wifi router every 5 seconds. Completely unusable. Now I have to go look for a new netbook distro, since they've turned Ubuntu into a steaming pile of shit.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[spiffmastercow]

So my hardware magically broke at exactly the moment I upgraded to 11.04? Methinks not.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[mcelrath]

I've been having kernel panics regularly, I recently figured out that it's due to "hardware acceleration" in the binary flashplayer, coupled with the open source video drivers (ati, for me). Right click on a flash animation and turn off hardware acceleration. And/or un-install that steaming pile of dung. Still, it shouldn't be causing kernel panics. I think the open source/drm drivers need work.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[spiffmastercow]

I love how everyone immediately assumes it's a hardware issue, when I clearly specified that the problems only started when I upgraded to 11.04. Again, it worked fine on all previous version of Ubuntu (down to 10.04), but took a shit when I upgraded to 11.04. But rather than acknowledge the problem, all the linux fanboys just put their fingers in their ears and shout "hardware problem" at the top of their lungs.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[amliebsch]

Really? I never you could recover from a kernel panic by switching to a terminal and restarting X! Mod parent INFORMATIVE!!!++ Thank you so much!!

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[tmetzcc325]

I've been using Lubuntu 11.04 on my Asus S101 EeePC with the 32GB SSD, and it has been great. Way more responsive than standard Ubuntu. And more stable. The battery life still sucks, though that might be a knock against Asus since the battery life has sucked since I was running UNR on it a couple years ago.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[thetoadwarrior]

Likewise when someone says it runs like a POS they should explain what hardware they're using since it is likely the problem and then someone can look into it. Better yet he reports as much detail about the problems and the hardware to the bug tracker and it will benefit him and many others with the same hardware. He may also find he had dodgy hardware and the OS is irrelevant so he could end up saving himself a lot of hassle.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[MrEricSir]

You sure it's *really* a kernel panic though? I read bug reports all day, and the first thing you learn is that most people use terms like that incorrectly.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[vbraga]

Yes, it's a kernel panic (I also do read bug reports all day ;)).

The blinking caps lock light usually gives panics away.

I suspect the proprietary ATI drivers or something. Maybe next weekend I'll take some time to properly debug it and submit a bug report to Ubuntu.

(By the way, MrEricSir, nice photos on your blog).

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Dog-Cow]

Shouldn't the last step of your sig be 2=0?

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[inasity_rules]

As I recall windows 3(? maybe I'm thinking of 3.11, but I think I'm thinking of 3) was damn hard to crash...

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[MrEricSir]

Thanks!

The proprietary ATI drivers are pure hell, but I'd be surprised if that alone could cause a kernel panic.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[gumbi west]

It's not all to MS's credit? I thought the OS was there to provide resources to applications. One example might be the "still on" resource.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[oakgrove]

That's interesting. My workstation at work is running Ubuntu 11.04 and hasn't had a single issue at all. I do Android development for a living and when I first got this job, they plunked me down in front of a shiny new Win7 box.

I gave it the old college try for two months but finally, after gritting my teeth for the last time, I made a beeline for the blank CD's and had Ubuntu installed over my lunch break.

Now, I can finally be productive with great tools integrated into the OS. SSH, bash, apt-get, tilda, vi, and most of my dev environment just an apt-get install away. Not to mention that the devices I work with (acer iconia a500, motorola xoom, nexus s) have the drivers built in for a drama free plug and play. If they tried to make me go back to windows, I'd resign on the spot.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Belial6]

There is something wrong with your computer hardware. As much fun as it was to point out older versions of Windows crashing, Windows 7 is solid as a rock on the stability front. The only Windows 7 computer I have run across that was prone to crashing was fixed with a box fan pointing at the motherboard.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[gottabeme]

Things in life ought to progress, i.e. get better. This is especially true with FOSS. Software ought to get more stable, have more bugs eliminated over time. It's truly sad that basic software functions like file open dialogs get torn out and rewritten from scratch so much that the actual number of bugs in everyday functionality seems to remain relatively the same.

I suppose it's the usual emphasis on the shiny rather than the worky.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[21mhz]

Might it be thermal shutdown? I had this issue after upgrading; apparently the new kernel does not play well with the (probably buggy) fan controller on some ThinkPads. After I blew the CPU fan slots through, it did not overheat any more.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[tessellated]

And can you tell me what exactly I do need a "screensaver" for in this age of netbooks and LCDisplays?
Disclaimer: all I use Ubuntu for is a convenient Debian installer...

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[ngileadi]

I don't know how this is relevant to the discussion, but you may want a blank screensaver to automatically lock your computer when you're away.

Sorry if I missed some sarcasm there.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[JasterBobaMereel]

Kernel Panic = Blue Screen

Both are caused by unstable drivers, so blame the driver that is killing your system, just like you would with Windows

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[quantumphaze]

To have a 1 minute warning to move the mouse before DPMS-off. Probably not so much a problem with LED backlit displays but continuously power cycling the CCFL because you took 1 second too long to read a wall of text probably isn't good for it's life span.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[quantumphaze]

Ever since I upgraded

There's your problem.

I did an 11.04 upgrade to a system that had 10.10 on it for all of a week. It regularly died with kernel oops and soon after, a panic. I reinstalled it (with LVM too) and works much more stable than 10.10 which has really bad problems with Kwin on Intel graphics (screensaver often locked up X if compositing was enabled).

Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the ful

[Joe_Dragon]

Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the full ones from ATI and NVIDIA?

Heh

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Can Ubuntu Linux Consume Less Power Than Windows?

Shouldn't it already? It's not like anything in Linux is causing the 3d acceleration to kick in.

Re:Heh

[Eponymous Coward]

What about the compositing window managers (like Compiz)?

Re:Heh

[slimjim8094]

Which will save power. The gfx card, as it happens, is rather good at doing window translation and compositing in hardware, seeing as that's what we use it for. A properly-designed gfx card (in a low-power state) and compositing WM should blow the pants off of a CPU solution. I don't know if this is the case (it depends on how far back an unloaded GFX card will throttle) but I wouldn't be super surprised

Re:Heh

[drzhivago]

Most Linux boxes don't have a monitor attached.

Least of all the ones running Ubuntu.

Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not going to choose a desktop OS based on which one gives me ten more minutes of uptime on a long flight, or saves me a KWh every month on the power bill. There are simply too many other deciding factors.

Re:Who Cares?

[hedwards]

For a desktop, it does cost you more to use more electricity. I'm not sure that it should be the only consideration, but now that my laptop can do most of what I want to do, there's no real reason for me to have a desktop other than gaming. The desktop at peak uses about 450 watts of electricty, granted it rarely if ever gets there, but then there's the monitor's use of energy. By contrast my laptop maxes out at 25 watts plus whatever electricity is wasted by the transformer.

Consequently, I might not even bother to replace my current desktop when it ultimately fails, seeing as most of the games I like to play run just fine on my laptop.

Re:It's all thanks to Unity !

[h4rr4r]

Considering they could just change the drop down to gnome or install lxde or xfce that seems a bit dramatic.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[Aphonia]

it says these are the blob ones and the opensource ones give higher power usage on the first page.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[ratboy666]

Please read the article:

"The respective proprietary graphics driver for each operating system was installed"

Can?... Shouldn't it?

[__aazsst3756]

It is a lighter weight OS, it should blow Windows doors off.

Re:Can?... Shouldn't it?

[Shados]

Its really not anymore. Windows is bloated for backward compatibility and because of its features. If you smack all the same features and the backward compatibility stuff in Linux, well, it gets bloated.

If you setup a minimal Linux setup with only a CLI and no other GUI, it will be lightweight too. Only issue is that a lot of people won't like it that way =P

Of course it "can"

[blai]

It just hardly ever "did", at least for me. For example, the Asus 1001p was advertised with an 11-hour battery because it shipped with Windows. If shipped with Ubuntu, it can only be advertised as having a 6-hour battery.

Re:Of course it "can"

[hedwards]

That's frequently because of proprietary drivers and APIs to manage the power. My Thinkpad gets five to six hours of battery life, and the utility for stretching it only works under Windows, which means that I have to give that up if I want to run Linux on that particular computer.

You learn something new every day

[farlukar]

I thought that on ./ all that counted (except for laptops) was uptime, ie. not turning your machine off when you're not using it.

Re:You learn something new every day

[tepples]

I thought that on ./ all that counted (except for laptops) was uptime

For one thing, laptops have become more popular and therefore more important. For another, better battery life means you're more likely to keep the laptop in suspend, which as far as I know preserves uptime, rather than shutdown.

Re:You learn something new every day

[Noughmad]

Besides this post being about laptops, less power consumption means greater uptime when running on a battery.

Re:You learn something new every day

[malsbert]

It continues.

Number of trials

[Aphonia]

There are an awful lot of sharp peaks in power consumption - I'd like to know how many runs they averaged their points over (i'm guessing it was all a single run, but i cant find the data on this test). Also, no specific hardware drivers other than the graphics driver were installed is a non-representative case on windows, where most manufacturers provide extra drivers and what not to give more features/ different power consumption. And finally, these are awfully high end machines - why not test something a normal person would have (i.e. a netbook, a 300 dollar laptop from [insert office store here], a 500 dollar desktop from [insert office store here], etc.?)

Re:Number of trials

[rbrausse]

the "study" design altogether ist great.

from TFA:

A distinct selection of systems was sought after and the number of systems was just limited to time available. As only having a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Professional, the hardware was also limited to newer platforms and no vintage hardware.

I love the laconic honesty; something that seems to be missing in other comparisons/tests/studies

Re:Number of trials

[sexconker]

There are an awful lot of sharp peaks in power consumption - I'd like to know how many runs they averaged their points over (i'm guessing it was all a single run, but i cant find the data on this test). Also, no specific hardware drivers other than the graphics driver were installed is a non-representative case on windows, where most manufacturers provide extra drivers and what not to give more features/ different power consumption. And finally, these are awfully high end machines - why not test something a normal person would have (i.e. a netbook, a 300 dollar laptop from [insert office store here], a 500 dollar desktop from [insert office store here], etc.?)

There's the rub.
Without Intel or AMD's CPU "drivers", you won't be able to get the Cool n' Quiet / EIST / whatever shit that underclocks your CPU and disables idle cores.
Intel's drivers are built into every Windows version since XP SP2, but they won't be the latest version.
AMD's drivers aren't built in, that I know of (I don't have an AMD Windows 7 system to test with).

And then you have to set your power scheme to "Minimal Power Management" to enable that shit.

common development

[metalmaster]

Both operating systems are written in C, no? If thats the case, they should be able to compete. I would assume MS devs have an advantage though, because they can evaluate opensourced code to see where it's efficient. They wouldnt have to rip code, but it gives an idea of what can be done better

I'd also wager that efficiency isnt solely in the hands of the ms/nix devs. If someone writes a shitty firmware for a hdd or disc drive that doesnt take power consumption into account its hardly the OS dev's fault

Re:common development

[H0p313ss]

Both operating systems are written in C, no? If thats the case, they should be able to compete.

Quote of the day...

Re:common development

[shutdown -p now]

Both operating systems are written in C, no? If thats the case, they should be able to compete.

Ford F-150 and Smart 4Two both run on gasoline, no? If that's the case, they should be able to compete on MPG.

Re:common development

[metalmaster]

Your analogy makes no sense at all.

F-150 and 4two running on gasoline is akin to a PC running on electricity. A more apt comparison might have been F-150 and 4two both using an IC engine, and i dont think thats the case with 4two.

Re:common development

[shutdown -p now]

A more apt comparison might have been F-150 and 4two both using an IC engine, and i dont think thats the case with 4two.

What kind of engine would you expect it to have that runs on gasoline, but isn't internal combustion?

If you meant to say that it's a hybrid, then no, it's not (at least not the conventional variety).

Re:common development

[bill_mcgonigle]

What kind of engine would you expect it to have that runs on gasoline, but isn't internal combustion?

I can haz fuel cell yet?

Color Me Skeptical

[Bacon Bits]

I've run Debian derivatives going back to '06 on my laptops -- an HP, a Dell, and a Samsung (this was the point at which I could install Linux and not have to spend the next several hours getting the network card and wireless card to work with my existing hardware). However, I found that Linux consistently cut my laptop power by about 20-30% over Windows XP. Vista was worse, of course, as that had serious power issues on laptops at first, but now Windows 7 performs as good as or better than XP, as near as I can figure. Still, I still find a consistently shorter battery life on Linux on my laptops.

This isn't data of course, and I'm sure others will have had the opposite experience, but it is my experience with my hardware. I never did try any of the kernels which had this power regression, however. I have been working on projects which require PowerShell and Office, so all my recent activity has been in Windows.

Re:Color Me Skeptical

[hitmark]

I suspect this is because, as found by Phoronix, Linux is unable to turn hardware off when it is not in use. This thanks to buggy ACPI or similar that the OEMs work around in their own drivers for Windows, but that the Linux devs have to find out about the hard way. Hell, not too long ago there was a desktop motherboard that was unbootable if Linux was honest about itself. This thanks to a garbage ACPI entry for anything other then Windows.

Re:Color Me Skeptical

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Do you find the same trend to be true just for hard disks? I've got a couple of Acer laptops and my wife uses hers for hours every day. And every day, the hard drive consistently reads >50 degrees C. I'm concerned that the hard drive will have a shorter life because of this.

Any suggestions as to what I can do? Would an SSD be better?

Thanks.

Re:Color Me Skeptical

[gottabeme]

Um, that's probably a matter of poor cooling in the Acer laptop. There might be a lower-power mode you could set with hdparm, but spinning the disk down completely just isn't practical: it gets spun back up too much. And a good SSD might cost more than the laptop is worth--certainly more than a new hard disk.

Buy a new hard disk if you want, one that's quiet and cool--but that's no guarantee it will be cool in your laptop.

My suggestion: back up your data regularly, set aside some money to buy a new disk when it fails, and be prepared for HDD failure.

Re:Color Me Skeptical

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Ok, thanks for the tips.

No Aero?

[magamiako1]

Is it just me or did they not include Aero for the assessment?

The video hardware is more efficient at rendering than the CPU, so this could skew the results quite a bit by potentially having Aero off.

Re:No Aero?

[magamiako1]

This is likely even more of a concern on the combination GPU/CPU systems where Intel/AMD are banking on the fact that you'll be rendering entirely on the GPU.

Re:No Aero?

[hedwards]

It could be worse, but given that things seem to be going in the Open CL direction, Linux should have the same access that MS does to the tools necessary to make that work.

Re:No Aero?

[magamiako1]

Well, I mean, I'm not saying that they shouldn't be equal, but the reality is they aren't. Tests like this don't tell the whole story because someone feels the "test isn't equal" if they don't.

The regular person doesn't know that. This article hitting slashdot will reach a lot of people that won't know the difference. It should be a test of what you experience.

dot slash?

[fluor2]

dot slash? ;>
-this is what we care about! spelling slashdot is /.

Re:dot slash?

[farlukar]

I cnocur.

That depends.

[degeneratemonkey]

In my experience, it depends on the hardware to some extent.

For example, consider that newer laptop GPU setups (using NVIDIA Optimus and whatever ATI calls their equivalent) use "switchable graphics." Essentially the output device is always a cheap integrated device, but when real GPU power is needed the OS will seamlessly switch over to a separate, bona fide GPU and have its framebuffers forwarded to the integrated chip.

This requires kernel-level support for the switchable graphics systems -- support that does not exist in the Linux kernel.

Because of this, the GPUs in these systems constantly operate at full power despite never actually producing rendered framebuffers. This eats laptop batteries alive.

Re:That depends.

[hitmark]

There is the bumblebee project for Nvidia that seems to have some progress.

Re:Noticed Ubuntu runs cooler...

[sexconker]

I run Win 7 / Ubuntu 11.04 dual boot. I have found that my CPU (Phenom II X4 955) averages about 17-21 Celsius at low loads/idle in Ubuntu and about 30-35 in Win 7.

Install the AMD Cool n' Quiet (or whatever they call it now) "drivers".
Then, in Windows, set your power profile to "Minimal Power Management".
This lets the CPU underclock itself, turn idle cores off, etc.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[TheNinjaroach]

Please read the article

That's a pretty serious request around this side of the Internet.

With or without Anti-Virus?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

Just don't give me any "base system" crap, test it with a real system running real background tasks. A windows machine running anti-virus real time protection may add significantly in terms of power. Multiplied over an entire office, that could add up. But I dunno what they used, cause I think the Phoronix website needs a little more power to withstand /.

Re:With or without Anti-Virus?

[gl4ss]

well as long as you don't use a bloated solution it's all good, as long as you don't set it to do full scan 24/7. but seriously, ubuntu is no lightweight. they got too much people wanting to be able to say that they contributed... anyways, they're not the only one's who did the tests. if you're just writing an essay, the virus check doesn't do anything anyways. and the aero guy in another comment, did they include 3d gpu compositing on the linux? Fact is, ubunto 10.4 did worse than previous ubuntus.

Re:With or without Anti-Virus?

[magamiako1]

gl4ss:

It's not a matter of whether or not they included 3D Compositing on Ubuntu. In Windows 7, Aero is the default view for Windows and should be treated as such. Almost no computer with Windows 7 doesn't include Aero.

Unfortunately the article is worded as if they simply used out of the box software. Windows 7, and Ubuntu. But the reailty is, out of the box, Windows 7 uses Aero. If they turned off Aero, that's not an out of the box test and it should be noted as such.

Re:With or without Anti-Virus?

[cbhacking]

Most AV suites are active less than 1% of the time on modern systems. Yes, they do add *some* cost, but it's hardly likely to sway the results by much.

Besides, AV is not strictly required. If you know what you're doing and don't get particularly unlucky, you can get by for years without it. If you are sufficiently unlucky, you can get completely taken over even if you know what you're doing and run up-to-date AV as well. I run a free and non-obtrusive AV program, but if it started having a noticable impact on performance, including battery life, I'd kill it in an instant.

Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worries

[gamrillen]

Whenever Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu, I'm always game to take it for a test drive. I use an EeePC 1005HA netbook and a VirtualBox VM (Windows 7 x64 host) to do my testing. For the last three versions (10.10, 11.04, and 11.10) I've had issues with the netbook overheating and shutting down the hardware. Additionally, the sleep/hibernation functionality never seems to work just right. Sometimes, when I close the netbook, it won't go to sleep at all and the LCD screen will stay turned on. Other times, the netbook will sleep peacefully, but won't boot back up when I open the lid (as set in my preferences) or hit the power button. I have to remove the battery and do a hard boot. As for the VM, Ubuntu runs incredibly slow even with the guest additions installed. I have to sometimes triple click on single click buttons to select something, and Gnome likes to generate random error messages. On the flip side, I can run Windows 7 x32, Windows 7 x64, and even Windows XP x32 on the netbook, and won't have any of the issues I see with Ubuntu. The same goes for using the three Windows variants mentioned above in the VM. Yes, less power consumption is a great thing, and yes it's awesome that interface tweaks are happening to make it prettier, but until stability issues with fairly common chip-sets are resolved, I won't be using Ubuntu on a daily basis. However, Linux Mint, which is based on the most current stable release of Ubuntu seems to take all of Ubuntu's shortcomings and clean them up. Mint just seems... tighter. Everything flows better, and I don't see the glitches that I normally see in Ubuntu.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[nschubach]

The Internet has sides? I thought tubes only had one continuous side.

Duct tape, obviously.

[CSMoran]

... it's so default, you don't have to list it.

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[0123456]

Weird. I have a 1005HAB running 10.10 and it's fine other than Unity randomly crashing when closing a Firefox window (which doesn't surprise me given all the other Unity bugs).

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[Abreu]

I have no problems with Ubuntu 11.04 suspend or hibernate on my Acer Aspire One (similar specs to an EeePC)

Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[RotateLeftByte]

There are far more usable and frankly higher quality distros than anything that comes from Canonical.

I'll probably be shot down in flames but as a long term linux supporter (since slackware 1.1 on Floppies) I've seen it evolve beyond all recognition.
At first Ubuntu was a breath of freah air. It took the debian dinosaur and shook it alive. Now, they are changing things and IMHO not taking the user base with them. I know of at least 10 former Ubuntu fans who have jumped ship since 10.10 came out. The quality is just not there any more. Far too much is crammed into each release with little thought for fixing the bugs.
Non of their stuff seems complete. Or in agile dev speak, 'It is not done.'
This is totally wrong and is only storing up a vast reservior of technial debt for the future.

Let the flaming begin.
Anon coz I have to work closely with Canonical in my day job.
 

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[Anonymous Coward]

Well which do you prefer? I used to use Ubuntu, but like you said, I got away from it because the quality and stability of each release seemed to go down.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[Ant P.]

Anon coz I have to work closely with Canonical in my day job.

*golf clap*

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[Foxhoundz]

Call it what you want but Ubuntu looks to be the de facto OS that represents the Linux desktop market. Even when I ask my friends who are not familiar with too many Linux distros , the first thing they can come up is "Ubuntoo". As such, like it or not, Ubuntu is the only OS that I can think of that has the resources and the organization structure to compete with Windows. However, with the recent changes following 10.10, it seems that they're beginning to lose the competition. That's bad news for every other Linux distro in the desktop market. When Ubuntu loses, the Linux community loses in terms of popularity and reputation.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[hedwards]

We'll see how long that lasts, considering how recent decisions appear to be more about chasing people away than making a better distro. I was using Ubuntu, but I won't be using it anymore, considering how much crap I got when I upgraded last time. I'm sorry, but if you're going to have a release be unstable, the user should be given a heads up that they're upgrading to a development release.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[onefriedrice]

RotateLeftByte (797477) says:
...
Anon coz I have to work closely with Canonical in my day job.

Uh oh. You're toast.

To be more on point, perhaps I'll be shot down in flames with you, but you're clearly correct. Ubuntu is far from the best ("highest quality") desktop distro, and it doesn't really make for an ideal server OS either, in light of the great Linux-based alternatives. I'm glad Canonical and Ubuntu exist because some of the projects they work on which set them apart may actually have broad appeal and be good for the "community" in the long run, but it is too bad it's them who have become synonymous with what [less-informed] people refer to as "Linux." People may not realize there are better alternatives, like these high-quality distros (in no particular order):

• ArchLinux
• Mint or just pure Debian
• Gentoo
• Fedora
• FreeBSD or NetBSD (won't have as broad appeal and obviously not Linux, but very high-quality operating systems nonetheless)

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[Lorien_the_first_one]

Actually, I want to know more. I've been shopping distros and so far, have been working with Fedora for my laptops. Which one do you like so far?

No flames here. Only curiosity.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[brokeassben]

I agree that 11.04 has had it's issues with crashes and such, but the previous couple of releases were pretty damn solid. I started with Red Hat back in 2002, then *attempted* Debian and Arch, successfully used Fedora, Ubuntu and Mint. I'm clearly no Linux guru, but Ubuntu has easily been the most stable/usable in my experience. However, I'd definitely be willing to give some others a try. My test laptop has been hanging out, waiting for something new to fire up.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[keneng]

Ubuntu is Linux just as much as any flavor. I've been installing and running with Ubuntu since roughly 2004.(dapper or breezy). Sure I've had issues at times with certain things, but there hasn't been an instance where I couldn't find something someone else actually resolved before I could get my hands dirty. The Launchpad and associated Ubuntu knowledge base have always come through for me. I love Debian too. But give credit where credit is due. Ubuntu has gotten snappier over time when using the same hardware. NOTICEABLY SNAPPIER. HATS OFF TO UBUNTU.

To those other guys trolling here and bad-talking ubuntu, you should be grateful the Ubuntu flavor exists as an OS alternative to try and run with. It certainly doesn't stop you from installing and running other Linux flavors.

When I purchase a new box, the first thing I'm going to do is to install the latest version of Ubuntu, and give unity a whirl. If I don't like it, I'll resort to the GNOME GUI. But if they removed my GNOME choice of gui, I'll have to resort to Debian which is fine too. I'm grateful for all these alternatives that are not MS-WINDOWS because the world needs them. All of you should be grateful for this Linux variety too.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[marnues]

I don't think you use Ubuntu for the reasons that most people use Ubuntu. It is the user friendly version of Linux. I use it because I no longer care to do anything past install to correctly setup my machine. Ubuntu is the only flavor that has a fully functional setup for those of us that want to use the computer rather than playing sysadmin for a single user machine.

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[fat_mike]

I've been a supporter since Slackware 0.98 and I agree. The whole point of Linux was choice. You could use whatever distro met your needs. Why is Ubuntu the be all end all distro?

"Because we have to beat Microsoft on the Desktop, duh!!!!"

I don't use Linux to be Microsoft at anything. I use the BEST tool for the JOB at hand. I don't look at Linux as a religion or a movement. Its a tool, just like Windows, just like OSX and all the others. If Linux is free why do the hard core zealots push it so hard to make money

I prefer Craftsmen for my hand tools, Dyson for my vacuum, Hoover for my carpet cleaner, Cub Cadet for my grass cutting, Pennington for my seed/fertilizer needs, Dawn soap packets for my dishwasher and Aveeno & Fructus for my body. I don't see anyone screaming Jihad on their forums.

You want to know why! Because they are marketed and reliable brands that people know and use. Microsoft, Apple, Sony, etc. guess what they have in common? Years and years of quality products with sales that allow them to market themselves. If Shuttleworth's pockets are so deep then why doesn't the average person know anything about Ubuntu?

Re:Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok

[grimharvest]

PCLOS is easier than Ubuntu. It's just amazing more people don't know that.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[MrHanky]

No, that's a moebius strip. A tube has an inside and an outside.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[alanthenerd]

You're getting confused by regular tubes. The Internet is made of special tubes that have an infinite number of sides. It's because there are so many sides it looks like it only has one side like regular tubes so it is an easy mistake to make.

TCP/IP stack

[DrYak]

They've already had chunks of BSD-licensed code in their TCP/IP stack.

The problem is specifically GPLed code like Linux, because GPL license requires that when distributing software made with it, you need to distribute the source of said software (the same way as source was distributed to you) so that the users can - if they wan - tinker with it (exactly like you did to make your own software out of it). GPL is "here's the code. Do whatever you want, provided that the next person in the chain gets the same freedom too".

Microsoft prefers either proprietary (because they can buy the code to use it - see Skype) or BSD. Because that one is "here's the code. Do whatever you want. We only ask you to mention us.".

Ok, some hardware needs extra parameters

[Marrow]

All hardware has VPD strings (vital product data) strings that will tell you what you have. Why cant they come up with a simple cheat sheet of default parameters for the hardware. Write some code that walks the bus from CPU out to the last usb dongle and if any gotcha hardware comes up, then its "magic numbers" get added to the boot parameters.
If the hardware is trustworthy, fine...no parameters. If not, then it gets the fixes it needs. Are these rules being hard-coded in now? Why edit a file in a million places to turn on something in grub. Add it to one place: the apt repository and then the next update the hardware profile parameters for mobo chip xyz version 6 mod 3 fix 2 get downloaded. If you have that exact thing, then it gets fixed.
You could have any number of these and they would not interfere with each other.

Re:Ok, some hardware needs extra parameters

[RobbieThe1st]

See, that would be great, except it doesn't work quite like that: Generally such hardware configuration would be entered into the driver, which works great... Until you end up with two or more pieces sharing the same VPD, but need slightly different handling rules. Or, what happens if a piece of hardware just plain lies about it's capibilities? That's the real problem, and it's hard to work around: Some driver may work perfectly well on the dev's device, but on someone's newer/older revision(etc.) it doesn't work quite right and crashes.
On top of that you have the issue of occasional flakey boards, so when you end up with an error like this, how do you detemine if it's the driver or the hardware, especially if you aren't in possession of the hardware yourself?

trolls

[Beelzebud]

Now it's time for the people insisting that there was no power regression, to admit they were wrong, and their attitude would have kept this bug swept under the rug if they had their way. I saw a few people trolling Phoronix for the past month saying this regression didn't even exist.

Re:trolls

[RobbieThe1st]

Of course, it *might* have not happened on their machines! AFAIK, it was due to some faulty bios tables, and only from some MFGRs. So, one same-spec'd model might not have the problem, and others might.

Re:trolls

[hitmark]

So it is yet another "Foxconn" rerun?

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[rwa2]

Hmm, I was given the impression that stock Ubuntu is pretty dismal on netbooks. Try one of the netbook remixes that actually use the array kernel tuned for Atom chips and other netbook hardware.

My favorite was eeebuntu 3.0 , but it hasn't been updated recently while waiting for the devs to polish off their new Aurora distro.

I've also played with Fuduntu, which seems like a nice rpm-based distro, but my machine didn't survive a yum update. I might try again.

Then there's the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which probably tracks the stock Ubuntu the closest, but I've never really played with it.

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[ratboy666]

Um...

Wouldn't sleep/hibernate functionality be the job of the hosting OS?

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[Anonymous Coward]

You can run Windows 7 x64 in a Atom N2xx? That's amazing. Tell me how you do it.

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[thetoadwarrior]

That takes all the fun out of commenting.

Title says "Less", Article says "Comparable"

[halligas]

"On a range of different systems, the power consumption of the Linux OS was comparable to that of Windows except for a few select workloads and systems." That sentence says power consumption was relatively the same, except when Windows consumed less. A little bias by the headline writer?

Re:Title says "Less", Article says "Comparable"

[RobbieThe1st]

I dunno... What I saw was close but slightly lower consumption on everything but the T61.

Linux 2.2 was better

[Billly Gates]

Linux has seriously regressed over the past decade. I remember when Linux was a lite alternative to Windows 2000 and had power management in software that was orders of magnitude better.

Those days are long gone.

I am sick and tired of playing with releases of Ubuntu and Fedora hoping this one will truly be unique and beat Windows. Last March I switched back to Windows 7 as I do not have time to tinker and fool around with older releases of gnome to avoid unity/gnome-shell, and trying to enable hardware GPU accelerated web browsing experience. If you want it to perform as good as Windows, then just use Windows.

Re:Linux 2.2 was better

[hitmark]

The reason for this is that there have been a transition from APM to ACPI. The former leaves the details up to the OS, the latter have some kind of meta-language for "describing" the hardware capabilities. Sadly it was set up while MS was still doing their EEE thing, and so we have something that on paper should be a standard, but in reality only really work in Windows. The rest of the world have to second guess everything.

And EFI seems to be heading in the same direction...

Agreed

[Benfea]

I'm no Microsoft zombie, but LINUX should have been stomping on Microsoft all along in this category, and there really isn't much excuse for this. Sometimes the LINUX camp is more insular, defensive, and partisan than Apple folk.

Of course not

[TheABomb]

The Ubuntu system stays on.

Re:Noticed Ubuntu runs cooler...

[Brad1138]

Thanks, but I do that already (in 7 and Ubuntu). Idle is probably more in the 26-32 range for 7 but still about 10 deg hotter than Ubuntu.

Re:It's all thanks to Unity !

[TangoMargarine]

This is Slashdot; we're masters of the overly dramatic.

LTS vs non-LTS

[AliasMarlowe]

I basically treat non-LTS Ubuntus as betas for the LTS. I don't expect them to work. I expect many things to be broken.

Yup, that's the truth: they are betas. I ran Warty and Breezy, but since Dapper (the first LTS), I've stuck with LTS releases on most of our boxes. Recently, I have not bothered installing non-LTS releases on any box; it just leads to too much grief. I have briefly looked at 10.10 and 11.04 on VMs, just the same way as I occasionally look at other distros.

Re:Offtopic....

[Tsingi]

Not saying I don't like your sig, just trying to give equal time to other cults. You talk about the differences, but the problem is with the whole. The bible teaches lots of insane things, religion in general is something we could all do without.

Re:Offtopic....

[EvanED]

They may teach it, but the church as an institution sure doesn't practice it very well, or they wouldn't move around accused priests, fight tooth-and-nail for their priests to not be subjected to criminal court proceedings, etc.

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[slartius]

he said he used a netbook _AND_ a windows 7 64x host. Sure, it may be confusing to some to name a piece of hardware followed by a piece of software, but the rest of us understood that he meant "a netbook and a normal computer". Sorry you're a bit slow, no one's perfect.

Well, down the line he also said that ...

On the flip side, I can run Windows 7 x32, Windows 7 x64, and even Windows XP x32 on the netbook, and won't have any of the issues I see with Ubuntu.

So it seems, that he is able to run a Win7 x64 on THE netbook (I guess it is the EeePC 1005HA). Quite an achievement.

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[Shados]

Ok, point taken :) I do beleive VirtualBox is able to emulate 64 bit platforms on 32 bit hardware... though that must be horribly slow, and on a netbook that WOULD be an achievement.

Re:Offtopic....

[bill_mcgonigle]

They may teach it, but the church as an institution sure doesn't practice it very well, or they wouldn't move around accused priests, fight tooth-and-nail for their priests to not be subjected to criminal court proceedings, etc.

âoeI like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.â -Mohandas Gandhi

Re:Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worrie

[Abreu]

Here's some help: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AspireOne

I have the D150 and everything works

Leave out the bloatware!

[Terminus32]

Install Lubuntu: it totally rocks, even beats Xubuntu in terms of being uber-light! As stealthy as a ninja...