Kernel Bug Means Linux Power Usage Remains High

An anonymous reader writes "The significant Linux kernel power regression reported back in April, which ended up being attributed to PCI-E Active State Power Management, is still not resolved even as Ubuntu 11.10 and Fedora 16 approach. Until Linux is able to handle ASPM in a manner more like Windows or the device drivers explicitly set the ASPM flag, users of many modern laptops need to use the "pcie_aspm=force" option to regain much of their battery life. At least a power bug affecting newer Intel hardware with the "energy performance bias" feature has been fixed. There's more information in this LaunchPad bug report and in the latest power consumption testing."

Comments

Why bother?

[msobkow]

The marginal performance improvements you get by tweaking kernel settings will not make one whit of difference to the average user unless there is a glaring performance issue like the power drain currently being discussed.

Grandma isn't going to install Linux on her laptop -- you are. And as the technically knowledgeable person, you should be doing any such tweaking. Other systems have the benefit of the OEM doing the tweaking and tuning, but it does get done by somebody. Don't blame Linux for not doing something automagically that other systems don't do, either.

"...most linux development is primarily focused on servers..."

I don't believe that's true. While server tweaks get the press, there is a lot of effort put into the desktop experience as well. You're just far more likely to hear about kernel tweaks that are useful for desktop performance from the "real time systems" people.