Kernel Bug Means Linux Power Usage Remains High

Posted by timothy on Friday October 7, 2011 @11:46AM from the wrong-kind-of-power-user dept.

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."

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Re:It is not something that can be resolved... by Microlith · 2011-10-07 14:12 · Score: 2, Interesting

Just because it's possible doesn't mean the zealots actually care about even trying. It's so much cooler to play the blame game, rather than focus on what's actually important: making things work!
I like how you come out of the gate with an insult, and expect people to fix things for you.
PROTIP: Kernel devs would rather play it safe than risk causing data loss.

That someone else is often Redhat or Ubuntu, which means the fixes don't travel back upstream.
No, it's unlikely they will either. I doubt they want to start randomly crashing people's machines.

Even though it's the BIOS makers' fault, as an end user, I don't care.
You should. You're aware of what's going on, so you should blame the people responsible.