Battery life extended by using Mageia?

[claudecat]

I noticed the other day that I was able to get almost a full hour more than usual out of my laptop while using Mageia 2 (KDE - fglrx driver). Not sure why, but I was impressed. Has anyone else noticed this or was it just an anomoly? I rarely use the proprietary driver, so maybe that was it. Anyway, even with Windows 7 I rarely get more than 3.5 hours of use - 4.25 while in (mostly) Mageia. Average linux time (everything from Arch to Zorin) seems to be 3-3.25 with the free ati driver.

[doktor5000]

Probably the free ati/radeon drivers do not support advanced power management features like ATI's powerplay.

[mmix]

https://01.org/powertop/

try to use powertop 2.1, it shows the power consumption.

[doktor5000]

Where does powertop measure/show VA/watts usage? Even if the free drivers caused fewer wakeups,
the GPU itself may draw much more power. That can't be measured with powertop. If you know how, please give us a hint.

[tom_]

Where does powertop measure/show VA/watts usage?

Power usage
When your laptop is running on battery, PowerTOP uses ACPI
to collect information on how much power you are currently using.

here you can find also a lot of other info about PowerTop

[Voodoo]

I thought the kernel updates have been improving battery life or a while

[doktor5000]

Where does powertop measure/show VA/watts usage?

here you can find also a lot of other info about PowerTop

I just ran it on AC power, where it shows nothing. Nevermind, sorry for the noise.