Using PowerTOP 2.6 Saves Power, Extends Battery Life On Ubuntu 14.04

[stqn]

It might be a bad idea to enable some of the settings. On my laptop:
- Intel HDA powersave causes an annoying "clicking" sound from speakers
- USB powersave causes my mouse to stop working every 30 seconds

Also powertop recommends enabling powersaving for my wifi card, but doing so makes the connection unstable and spams the system log with errors.

[Morpheus]

a bit off-topic, but does anyone know how to keep the parameters modified by powertop between reboots ? I don't reboot that frequently (I'm on Manjaro), but I would have to get powertop automatically set the settings I want.

[curaga]

Powertop changes kernel default settings, which are decided by your distro.

[Kostas]

1) Don't use LaptopModeTools, its pretty much been abandoned. Everyone's moving/moved over to TLP.
2) You're supposed to be TLP + PowerTop together, not just one or the other.

Which begs the question, which parts of the stack are to blame for users needing to install those 2 rather than have things working automatically ?

[AnAkIn]

Try my kernels nad APM [instal NeteXt'73] - I resolved this problems

netext73.pl

Then it might be a good idea to send patches upstream if you solved them

[ext73]

If you want to intelligently manage energy / performance / responsiveness of the system and hardware resources, it is proposed to install Our NeteXt'73 and install my solutions: one of the kernels - appropriate for the architecture, scripts managing energy and efficiency = APM and make appropriate entries in Grub, and also install the latest Linux firmware / microcode. Below videos of the action following system:

Notebook - MSi X370:
APU AMD E-350 (1600 MHz),
GPU: Radeon 6310,
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
Kernel: 3.14.4-ext73-f1-29.5-brazos-ags-cfs,
enegią management: APM 3.4, entries in Grub, Linux-firmware/amd microcode,
Drivers: Catalyst 14.4 [stable].

You can see how the system works by using profiles of performance-ondemand and performance-conservative - for APM. In the movies you can see how my APM gradually "quenches" individual devices and a decrease of energy consumption.

video-2

video-3

video-4

aha another important piece of information - while working on the battery practically everything in PowerTOP will be on Good [on AC everything will be on the 'Bad' - intentionally = full power of the machine] - almost as certainly 'VM writeback timeout' will be 'Bad' - here is my purposeful = value proposed by PowerTOP I consider "inappropriate". In addition, a certain portion of energy saving systems WiFi does not work - hence be 'Bad' = disabled functionality in the driver sources [Developers driver turned off] or the lack of such functionality at all. This works for sure in part Realtek drivers, Atcheros or all of Intel's ... well, unless you switch it off this functionality by NeteXt'73.

[ext73]

A true energy management system

If you want to intelligently manage energy / performance / responsiveness of the system and hardware resources, it is proposed to install Our NeteXt'73 and install my solutions: one of the kernels - appropriate for the architecture, scripts managing energy and efficiency = APM and make appropriate entries in Grub, and also install the latest Linux firmware / microcode. Below videos of the action following system:

Notebook - MSi X370:
APU AMD E-350 (1600 MHz),
GPU: Radeon 6310,
RAM: 4 GB DDR3
Kernel: 3.14.4-ext73-f1-29.5-brazos-ags-cfs,
enegią management: APM 3.4, entries in Grub, Linux-firmware/amd microcode,
Drivers: Catalyst 14.4 [stable].

You can see how the system works by using profiles of performance-ondemand and performance-conservative - for APM. In the movies you can see how my APM gradually "quenches" individual devices and a decrease of energy consumption.

video-2

video-3

video-4

[ext73]

It might be a bad idea to enable some of the settings. On my laptop:
- Intel HDA powersave causes an annoying "clicking" sound from speakers
- USB powersave causes my mouse to stop working every 30 seconds

Try my kernels nad APM [instal NeteXt'73] - I resolved this problems

netext73.pl

[AnAkIn]

It might be a bad idea to enable some of the settings. On my laptop:
- Intel HDA powersave causes an annoying "clicking" sound from speakers
- USB powersave causes my mouse to stop working every 30 seconds

[c2p_]

you also need to add the following line to the [service] section, as powertop appearently needs a terminal to run:

Environment="TERM=xterm"

source: Arch Wiki - Powertop

PowerTop uses ncurses, I suppose that even with --auto-tune, it's trying to init ncurses, which fails without terminal (real or faked by $TERM).