Samsung NP300v5z and Mageia 2

[dadix]

64 bit installation
cpu : intel core i5 2410M
lcd: 15.6" LED HD (220 nit. Non Glass)
vram: NVidia GT520MX gDDR3 1GB HBR
memory: 4 GB
hdd: 640 GB
odd: Super Multi Dual Layer (SATA)
wired: 1 Gb LAN
communic: Intel 802.11 bgn(1x1) + BT3.0HS

After testing Mageia 2 with KDE I found some disturbing things:
1.The battery keep me only 1 hour . (In Windows 7 32 bit - 4 h )
2.Screen Brightness settings does not work for key combinations Fn + F2 (-) and Fn + F3 (+)
3.Screen Brightness settings you can make only click on battery icon from task bar but change is not saved and after a while brightness is lost and returns to default.The same things happens when settings are done from System Settings-> Power Management.

I hope these things will be corrected for the 64 bit version that I tested it and I have installed on my laptop.
And I hope that changes will be added in updates because I am not a programmer and do not how to make complicated changes.

[tom_]

After testing Mageia 2 with KDE I found some disturbing things:
1.The battery keep me only 1 hour . (In Windows 7 32 bit - 4 h )

do you have cpufreq installed?
please open a terminale, type these commands and post the output

Code: Select all

rpm -qa | grep cpu
cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor


2.Screen Brightness settings does not work for key combinations Fn + F2 (-) and Fn + F3 (+)

I think you should assign these keys to the command you want in KDE control center;
the result will be similar to what you said on point 3.

3.Screen Brightness settings you can make only click on battery icon from task bar but change is not saved and after a while brightness is lost and returns to default.The same things happens when settings are done from System Settings-> Power Management.

here the problem is that Samsung doesn't help to prepare Linux driver for their laptop,
so this is the best result possible (I have a Samsung laptop too )

[dadix]

after this command : rpm -qa | grep cpu
i have this response : plasma-applet-system-monitor-cpu-4.8.2-5.mga2 cpufreq-2.0-3.mga2
and after this: cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
i see this : ondemand

I dont know what it means !

You have 32 or 64 bit installation? And how long the battery keep ?

[Max]

I have the exact same issue (battery doesn't last long) with my Toshiba L745-S4210 Core i3 laptop. (64 bit)
I have:
cpufreq-2.0-3.mga2
plasma-applet-system-monitor-cpu-4.8.2-5.mga2
And my governor is also set to ondemand.

EDIT:
It looks like that after installing the cpufrequtils package one can manually set the CPU frequency governance.
Perhaps later I will experiment with a script that will set the governance for the CPUs when switching to battery power, that will be activated by the battery applet in KDE.

EDIT++:
It looks like cpufreq-set requires su privileges. That is not a clever way to do things...

EDIT the 3rd:
I manually set all my cores to the powersave governor, and watched my battery drop 20% in 20 minutes. It is now reporting an hour and 20 minutes remaining on battery life, but has been reporting that for the past 20 minutes...
I suppose that that discrepancy is due to the fact that it constantly re-evaluates itself. Also, the powersave governor doesn't necessarily save power. It maintains a certain maximum CPU clock speed (lower than maximum possible CPU clock speed), but that may still cost a lot of power due to heavy load. (Explanation)
If only there were a way to limit the GPU...

[tom_]

Hi,

here you can found how the power management works
in Mageia and how to check/modify it.

You should also check if there is no task keeping busy CPU/GPU,
the monitor brightness and maybe some other hardware;
you can use the utility powertop to see how your laptop performs
under this point of view

[dadix]

PowerTop showing processes are not optimized.