This question is present as a matter of historical interest. While you are encouraged to help maintain its answers, please understand that "big list" questions are not generally allowed on Ask Ubuntu and will be closed per the FAQ.
Is it possible to greatly extend the usage time of a laptop or notebook running on battery by disabling various services and installing various packages?
What tricks or tips do people have for getting an extra hour or two out of their batteries?
Use powertop to see which programs are doing unneeded background processing such as beagle/tracker, weather notifications, gnome-do, and (if you don't need the internet) network-manager, mail-notifications.
Run sudo powertop --auto-tune to set all tunable options to their GOOD settings.
Install the package laptop-mode-tools.
This package is not necessary on newer versions of Ubuntu:
Will they affect performance negatively?
– Dmitriy Likhten Aug 13 '10 at 15:34I've been able to more than double the battery life of my netbook by turning off a bunch of services I don't need, and unloading their kernel drivers.
Use service --status-all to see what's running on your system, and service <service-name> stop to shut it down.
Use lsmod to see what kernel modules are loaded, and rmmod <module> to unload it.
If/when you want to bring things back, easiest way is to simply reboot.
Sometimes you also need to kill daemons or programs that are using the service or driver before they can be turned off. Look at output from ps aux to see what's running, and kill -9 <pid> to terminate them.
Services I usually turn off include: Ubuntu One, ssh, apache, databases, avahi, pulseaudio, cups, apparmor, acpi-daemon, bluetooth. Modules I unload: The whole audio stack, usb_storage, webcam drivers, wireless, bluetooth. (Some services like audio don't die easily.)
I've even gone as far as shutting down x (service gdm stop) and working entirely just from consoles, which let me stretch my netbook battery life to nearly 8 hours.
Here are a few ideas:
In empirical tests, power consumption of Compiz vs Metacity was the same, within the limits of measurement accuracy (0.1W).
– RAOF Oct 11 '10 at 09:40I will Update my answer on Is there a power saving application similar to Jupiter?, please have a look
Apart from using Jupiter, I was using TLP and it helped a little. Plus, it is my advice to not use Wubi as it sometimes drains battery faster than the standard install.
Also, keeping your drivers updates and installing most stable proprietary drivers helps.
Anyway, to install TLP use this:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw
sudo tlp start
As I tell with all my clients with laptops - if you have a laptop make sure you are properly discharging and recharging your battery. This greatly extends the life of your battery.
Ubuntu has some great power saving options (System > Preferences > Power Management) Which will allow you to setup functions to help save your batteries life while away from A/C
Other things to take into consideration - if you're not using Bluetooth or Networking turn off those services (some Vendors even include hardware buttons for this) Dimming your Laptop Display is also a good way to conserve battery power. Lastly straying away (when possible) from CPU/GPU intensive operations will help to conserve battery power.
EDIT:
Usually it is said that Lithium ion battery has no memory effect. I read that a lot of times in several different places and chose to believe in it and charge my notebook battery randomly. Don't know if that is the reason, but in two years I ended up with a lousy battery (doesn't last more then 10/20 minutes). On the other side, for my smartphone I almost only recharge when the battery is around 5%, and after two years I almost can't notice any difference in the battery state. I would say it is good luck with the phone, but then I stumble across this article. It is a Nature publication and though I haven't read it all, it says that lithium ion battery do present a memory effect. So be aware that it is relevant to spare your battery of unnecessary charge cicles.
In addition to dimming the display, turning off bluetooth, etc. I sometimes use the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor to limit the power my processor cores use. You can add it to a panel by right-clicking on a panel, selecting Add to Panel, and finding it in the list.
You can use the terminal app called powertop to find out what is making the cpu "wake up". simply install by doing sudo apt-get install powertop and then run by doing sudo powertop
The Ubuntu Kernel team has written some notes on how to save power here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagement/PowerSavingTweaks
Also, there are notes on how to identify applications and services that may be sucking power here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/PowerManagement/IdentifyingIssues
It might be a bit late, but I've just found this out myself. Just search for quiet splash in /boot/grub/grub.cfg and add pcie_aspm=force behind it.
It lifted my battery life from 45 minutes to 1 and a half hour! :D
On some systems (including my own), the pcie_aspm=force parameter kills the battery in the long run, to the point of it becoming practically useless (10 minutes on a full charge).
/etc/default/grub and run update-grub xD Wich indeed may be a better idea xD GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash pcie_aspm=force"
– RobinJ
Sep 04 '11 at 09:01
Ubuntu provides simple power management under System -> Preferences -> Power Management. From there, you can configure what happens when running on battery versus on AC power, including screen brightness and sleep/hibernate modes. Tweaking these settings can give you improved battery life without having to install or configure any extra packages.
Kubuntu has similar options in System Settings -> Advanced -> Power Management.
To access power settings click on the battery icon in the status indicator and you can change power preferences.
There's also other tools like the gnome cpu-throttler applet if your cpu supports dynamic scaling. power-top can give you an insight into what the most power-hungry applications/services are...
i've also heard rumors, though seen no evidence myself, that the opensource graphics drivers for nvidia/ati do not support power-saving mode, which would lead to lower battery life. in this case, it might make sense (though i generally wouldn't recommend it) to use the proprietary graphics drivers for your system, as they may have better power-saving.
You can install bumblebee if you have an Optimus technology laptop with a nVidia GPU. It will extend your battery life to very good extent. To install it go to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee
It extended my battery life from 2.00 hours to 4.30 hours.
Turn down brightness and shut of wireless , leave screen saver as blank and lower the time when display shuts off on idle.
Are you running through wubi? I find that this makes Ubuntu run slower, lag more, and cause faster battery drains. I solved this by keeping my screen dimmest as possible, allowing it to dim to save power, keeping wifi switched off often and closing background programs.
You could do something like this to limit cpu-speed
sudo -i
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/cpuinfo_min_freq > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
The applet constantly reads stats, not much but is still uses power ;) i often do this in the summer not because I'm away from the plug, but for not overheating my computer.
I have 2 hard drives - an SSD which stores / and a larger spindle for storage.
I set hdparm to spin down the storage drive after 10 minutes of inactivity. In /etc/hdparm.conf put e.g.:
/dev/sdb {
spindown_time = 60
}
This works well because I mostly keep music & movies on the storage drive so when I'm in hardcore work mode I don't access it at all.
As well as saving power, this makes the laptop noticeably cooler and often the fan will turn off completely if I'm not doing anything too strenuous, giving completely silent running!
A lighter desktop environment will use less power. Take a look at Ubuntu-supported "flavors" https://ubuntu.com/download/flavours and consider using a non-GNOME DE.
Here is some simple tips I use to save my battery :
Install TLP :
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw
sudo tlp start
Disable Bluetooth at startup
Using TLP
sudo nano /etc/default/tlp
Uncomment the following line :
DEVICES_TO_DISABLE_ON_STARTUP=“bluetooth”
Using Rc.local
sudo nano /etc/rc.local
Add the following before the line with exit 0 :
rfkill block bluetooth
Disable keyboard brightness
Reduce screen brightness
Disable networking when not using it (watching movie etc...)
For laptops with two or more graphics cards, using the integrated one can save significant amounts of power.
For NVIDIA cards, going to PRIME Profiles and switching to Intel (Power Saving Mode) in nvidia-settings cut my power consumption in half and doubled my battery life.
You can also use (for example from the Gnome menu-bar) the CPU widget, that offers scheduling options depending on your CPU.
if you want save battery life. click on the battery icon on the task bar then press power saver. really works. if ur gonna go somewhere your not going to use your internet switch if wifi and your internet connection. lower the screen brightness. mute the volume if your not gonna use volume . lower it or just mute it. don't put your laptop on something that's like a blanket bed dirty desk, etc. because these things can heat your laptop and make the fan work more so that will reduce battery energy too. hope this works!!! :)
You mouse will be suspended and it will drive you crazy. At least it did it to me.
– Javier Rivera Aug 06 '10 at 13:47echo -1 > /sys/bus/.../yourmousebut it's usually easier to restart. – Javier Rivera Jan 27 '11 at 08:32