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  • Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu Power Tests

    Phoronix: Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu/Lubuntu Power Tests

    With the extensive Linux power consumption tests that I've been carrying out to solve some nasty Linux kernel power regressions and find other areas for optimization, one of the requests that has come in frequently is to compare the power consumption of the KDE, GNOME, Unity, Xfce, and LXDE desktops. After the article earlier this week to look at how the desktop environments / compositing window managers affect OpenGL performance, I carried out a quick desktop power test. In this article are battery power consumption results for Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu.

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    Why is the wattage so high?

    Having an unoptimized OS running idle sucking battery really bothers me, my laptop idles at ~7.2Watt with screen and wifi ON and it's not even a new model (only Core 2 Duo) So a normal 6 cell 4800mAh battery = 6 hours idle, 5 hours web for me.

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    • #3
      Battery Life

      Batteries:
      Depends on the age of the battery, which I never see mentioned in the power consumption articles written out unto the Internet vast.

      My Five year old Laptop began dying early in its third year.
      Now in it's fifth year it barely maintains six minutes of computer activity.

      Just saying it can be a false positive to point the finger at Linux sometimes.

      Ubuntu:
      The results look to be rather uniformed across the board. I'm surprised because I would have assumed Lubuntu would have been substantially great in its' ability to outperform its' brethren.

      Another test would have been to utilize XBox Media Center (XBMC) and seen the power consumption performance during its' being run idle.

      But I digress

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      • #4
        I think they should start using KDE as the default, and create a Gubuntu for a Gnome-centric distro.

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        • #5
          what does X axis is?
          stretch it more in Y axis, to see differences

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          • #6
            Nepomuk

            Nepomuk was indexing files and then stoped, so power usage droped to normal level?

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            • #7
              Thanks Michael. I'd still like to see KDE with/without desktop effects enabled if that's possible (Alt+Shift+F12 toggles effects on/off).

              Sounds great FunkyRider, any tips on achieving that? I managed to get my laptop down from 35W(!) to 25W recently (mostly since nvidia's powermizer was constantly switching to high performance mode for things like scrolling a web page). Still a long way off 7W!

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              • #8
                different compositing modes in kwin

                I'd like to see a comparison of the different compositing modes in kwin (XRender vs. OpenGL and the different scale methods). Imho, kwin is currently the best window manager feature-wise and I think it would be very interesting to see, how the different options affect performance and power consumption. Especially the blur feature seems to consume a lot of battery.

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                • #9
                  Install laptop mode tools, create model specific scripts, make sure backlight dimming works, buy an intel SSD (!), only use integrated graphics (I know...), Core 2 Duo not Celeron and Pentium, install PHC kernel to lower voltage to the lowest and LED backlight and you will achieve it.

                  My current configure idles at 7.2W, single core full load at 16.6W and dual core full load at 17.6W. (I wrote a custom script to decrease frequency/voltage when two cores are loaded, sort of like soft Turbo boost). This is achieved in Ubuntu Gnome desktop with Compiz ENABLED.

                  I don't know how to upload image to this site and can't find a fast way to upload image anywhere, so will skip the picture attachment

                  The lowest peak wattage record I've get is 5.8 Watt :O
                  Last edited by FunkyRider; 03 June 2011, 09:22 AM.

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                  • #10

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