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As the title suggests I'm a new to linux and I'm having some trouble setting up it up. I have a DELL inspiron n5110 with an nVidia 525m and i7-2630QM. Well after a bit of reading and confusing myself I followed instructions in this tutorial, which seemed to work. The battery usage dropped from ~2000 to ~1600. Thou it's not as much as I'd like to. So I tried the Intel tweaks.

After applying the Intel tweaks it didn't take any effect, I think I did something wrong. Thou I'm not sure. But the comments stated that most people saw a drop to ~1000. I wanted to try just disabled the card on boot with the instructions here: http://github.com/Bumblebee-Project/bbswitch, but I can't open /etc/modules trough the terminal. It says "Permission denied" or "Command not found" if I use sudo /etc/modules. I'm not sure what other info do you need to be able to make any sense of this. So just ask and tell you what I can. I'd need to achieve a much lower usage one way or another, because I need to the laptop in class.

Lekensteyn
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Infernal
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  • I don't have an nvidia optimus card, but try this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/36930/how-well-do-laptops-with-nvidia-optimus-work – Savvas Radevic Feb 12 '12 at 10:03

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Bumblebee installation instructions can also be found in Is a NVIDIA GeForce with Optimus Technology supported by Ubuntu?

It includes bbswitch by default, so you do not have to get the code from the Git repository nor edit /etc/modules (it's a file, not a command/program!) because the card is disabled when Bumblebee starts. Keep in mind that the power usage depends on the machine your have. For example, I have a GT425M GPU with an i5-460M CPU. That'll use way less power than an i7 processor. To improve battery life:

  • Lower the brightness level of the screen
  • Disable wireless if you are only taking notes or reading PDFs in class and do not need to use Internet
  • Disable the webcam (Fn + ??) and other unnecessary peripherals like Bluetooth
  • Apply the Intel module options as mentioned in Battery life decreased after upgrade to 11.04
Community
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Lekensteyn
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    Of course i disabled Bluetooth and WiFi, but even so i only get about 40% of the Batterylife id get under Windows under the same conditions. I'll try the link you sent me, I'm also wondering could i run something like this in ubuntu? link – Infernal Feb 12 '12 at 13:44
  • On a side note. When type "sudo gedit /etc/default/grub" to add the i915.i915_enable_rc6=1 it opens a text editor, but it also shows an error. (gedit:1966): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to store changes into/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: Failed to create file '/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel.9RTP9V': No such file or directory

    (gedit:1966): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to set the permissions of `/root/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but failed: No such file or directory When i save the file, i get exactly the same error. After which the terminal freezes.

     – Infernal Feb 12 '12 at 15:28
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    Thank you very much! I got it sorted with a fresh install of Ubuntu. – Infernal Feb 13 '12 at 07:26