0

What tools or measures are available for saving energy in desktop computers / PCs?

Is there an easy way to switch between GUI and CLI that really stops and starts GUI to minimise the power consumption of graphics card whenever GUI is not required?

Vijay
  • 1
  • I couldn't understand what you meant by the last paragraph? – Anwar May 17 '17 at 06:13
  • I read somewhere on the net that graphics card card is one of the key power consumer (mainly for processing) within a computer, and just switching from GUI to CLI using Ctrl + Alt + F1 does not stop processing for GUI. – Vijay May 18 '17 at 23:16
  • There are 2 questions in Vijay's post. Only the first is a duplicate. The second, which is quite clear to me, is NOT. Or at least not on the basis of the link given, since I can't see that it addresses that question at all. The premise that motivates the question may or may not be true, but it is clearly a legit, meaningful question, and clearly CAN be answered. – Lew Rockwell Fan May 19 '17 at 03:07

1 Answers1

0

What tools or measures are available for saving energy in desktop computers / PCs?

gnome-power-manager would be a good choice. There are alternatives. Try that one first.

Is there an easy way to switch between GUI and CLI that really stops and starts GUI . . .

Sure. All desktop environments (examples: openbox*, gnome, lxde, unity) have some way to "log out", even if it is only a command you run in terminal. Typically it is a choice on some sort of "leave" menu, along with "shut down" and maybe things like "hibernate" or "suspend". If you don't use a "display manager" (example: lightdm), the kind of program that gives you a gui to login with, X will exit when you log out. If you insist on a gui login screen (which is to say a "display manager", which is a misleading name but that's what they are called) it is a little messier, but if no other facility for this is provided you can always:

sudo killall Xorg

With a plain Openbox environment (which some would insist is a window manager, not a DE, but in the case of Openbox or similar WMs it is a hair splitting distinction), for example, the command is:

openbox --exit

Going the other way, starting the gui environment from the cli, use the command:

startx

That is part of the package xinit if you have to install it, but you almost certainly have it already. If you are going to do this regularly, I'd suggest you remove your display manager, which will just make it harder and not really offer any advantage. Without a display manager, you log in from a non-windowed command line. You'll get a prompt, typically:

NAME_OF_YOUR_COMPUTER login:

at which you enter your user name. Then you'll be prompted for your password. How simple is that?

, , , to minimise the power consumption of graphics card whenever GUI is not required?

As to whether it will actually save a significant amount of power, that isn't obvious to me. Maybe. Probably depends on exactly what you would have been doing in either interface. I suspect that if the bottom line is that you accomplish the same task, the power consumption won't be much different. Some, yes. But significantly? Maybe.

Lew Rockwell Fan
  • 590