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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."
Phoronix has issues because the guy running it likes to oversensationalize and hyperbolize to get traffic and ad revenue... which is to say it's exactly like Slashdot with the difference being that Phoronix actually does some useful work and there are valuable facts that Phoronix discovers.
The (multiple) kernel power bugs are a very real problem affecting a large number of Linux users and Phoronix helped to shine a light on the issue and at least get the word out about work-arounds. I don't hang on everything that Phoronix publishes, but dismissing it just shows that you want to remain wilfully ignorant about real issues surrounding Linux so that you can appear 'l33t' to your friends.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
Seems like its been so long since relevant technical submissions were made to /. I remember being able to learn so many interesting OS tricks from poster's comments to articles and hearing about new software.
Now it's mostly just crap about who pissed on who's patents...
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
It's a problem with the BIOS manufacturers, and the BIOS incorrectly reporting its ASPM capability. When an OEM installs Windows on a laptop, it can correctly tune these settings. But for a fresh install of Linux that YOU performed, a database of every motherboard + BIOS combination needs to be maintained in the open to set the force PCIE ASPM flag. If set wrongly, when the BIOS doesn't support it, it could lead to locking which is far more serious.
There are other solutions to effectively manage power in Linux, like Jupiter.
For more (and better) information, see the following links: About the Kernel 3.0 "Power Regression" Myth and PCIe, power management, and problematic BIOSes
Why use Intel icon when it's a Linux issue?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Yes, but apparently a lot of the time the BIOS doesn't report ASPM even if it does support. You are right in that Linux can't assume anything, but OEMs are aware of it.
+1. I've been sticking with Maverick on my Vaio E, since Natty actually slashed half of my battery life, even when forcing ASPM
And this sort of thing really ought to be used to slap MS upside the head for behaving irresponsibly. Years back when ACPI was first coming out and a significant number of motherboard models were shipped with a broken DSDT that would only function with Windows. The company creating the firmware didn't care and MS had the money to work around the problem leaving Windows the only platform that would work correctly.
MS could have solved the problem by refusing to implement work arounds, but opted to go out of its way to work around broken implementations rather than force the devs to program the DSDT correctly.
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.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Try using Jupiter (http://www.jupiterapplet.org/). It's not there in the repos, but there is a ppa available for it: https://launchpad.net/~webupd8team/+archive/jupiter .
Um.. The "Halloween Documents"?
That was a series of leaked emails from 1999-ish where Microsoft had discussed that hardware was "too standard" so actually encouraged this as a way for OEMs that sell finished systems to look better... And to spike the budding Open Source as well.
Intel happily chipped in because the pushed specs like USB where every device can be super cheap... And controlled by the CPU... all those $39 printers, winmodems, GMA900, etc all sucked up CPU so Intel could sell more... And all those devices that used to be independant now were tied to windows.
The net effect was that all the device makers were spending time making the cheapest devices, and driver writers were spending all their time fighting windows.. And everybody else's drivers. It was simply impractical to support anything else.
No, that only worked in cases where the Windows DSDT was standards compliant, much of the time even that didn't. I've done that in the past and it doesn't guarantee you any improvement as MS wasn't validating the DSDT against the official Intel implementation that everybody else had access to.
Nice, that some jackass with mod points felt the need to mod me down without bothering to understand the issue though.
It's pretty well established that the ACPI implementation that MS was using with Win XP was non-standard. The one that folks had access to wouldn't compile the DSDTs that were coming with a lot of the computers because they were buggy and non-standard. MS had the advantage of controlling the only validation program that mattered and could hard code into their OS the bits necessary to work with the most common bugs.
Unfortunately for Linux, *BSD and everybody else, those coders didn't have access to that information and had to go to a huge amount of work to rewrite the DSDT and load that so that it would work as the standard specify.
Also, nice ad hominem you've got there, I am not a Linux fanboy,
Bahdum-tssch! :-D
So your answer is use esoteric workarounds? I'm shocked you didn't add stable kernel ABI nonsense just to add to your giant fail and bullshit. And folks wonder why Linux is dead last. MSFT and Apple are bring their A games, your playing hackey sack.
I know its a complete shock but to most people? windows and OSX just work and they do so without fail, without esoteric workarounds, without driver bullshit and WITHOUT EXCUSES, which sadly is all you get from the "community" anymore, along with bullshit, insults, and pages of CLI "fixes" crapola. Oh don't forget to call me an "M$ Ninja shill astroturfer dirty man!" just to seal the fail trifecta. stupid shit like this is why Linux is dead last and frankly? deserves to BE last.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.