Need your help with powersaving on my laptop!

[ahealthyearth]

Hello wonderful Mageia community.
I discovered your distro a few days ago and I love it. It's currently installed on my two desktops. However I would like to install it on my laptop. I have an Asus 1005ha and I have tested the live iso and it works great except for one major factor - battery life.
My current main OS on my Asus 1005ha netbook is Opensuse 13.2 KDE. Opensuse is fantastic but I feel more at home with Mageia, especially considering the flash games work a lot better. So I would like to install Mageia but I would also like to maintain the current powersaving I have now.

Originally, when I first installed Opensuse 13.2 on my netbook, my 9 cell, 7200mah battery would last 2 to 3 hours....and less than an hour playing video. That is until I installed these bits of software:
acpid
pm-utils
laptop mode tools
tuned
tuned-utils
(and also tuned-compat for centos or fedora repos)
And after installing these I also configured them as well. In the opensuse forums I have written a helpful how-to here: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/505760-Improve-your-battery-life-helpful-tips-to-extend-battery-life!

According to powertop, after configuring these software on my current Opensuse 13.2, my battery now gets 5.56W on idle without wifi and just under 6W with wifi on (idle). In the real world I get 6 to 8 hours on constant use. And I get about 3 to 4 hours of battery when watching a video which is pretty good. And according to one person, he has seen on his T430(im thinking its a thinkpad) a drop from 22W on idle to 11W on idle. In fact my laptop lasts me throughout the whole day considering I dont spend all my time on my comp - just a few hours at a time emailing, writing, browsing, listening to music, etc.

The reason I mention this is because after checking the Mageia repos, Ive noticed they have acpid and pm-utils already installed. There is no tuned or tuned-compat or tuned-utils, nor is there any laptop mode tools (I know pm-utils has some of the great benefits in laptop mode tools, but not all of it). The battery I get when I run the live iso is roughly the same as it was when I first installed Opensuse 13.2 KDE prior installing the powersaving software and configuring them. It's not that great. I'm getting 2-3 hours.

I would love to switch over to Mageia because I think Mageia is probably one of the best (if not the best linux distro Ive tried so far), but battery life and portability does matter to me since I have a laptop. Are there any tools similar to tuned? Will there be in the future?
If anyone has any experience with configuring or installed certain software in the Mageia repos that will prolong battery life or decrease power consumption, please let me know what you did.
Oh, and I have tried powertop --calibrate and it doesn't do much. In fact after powertop --calibrate I got pretty much the same battery life as I did prior. It was no help.
Thank you,
Adrian

[doktor5000]

For laptop-mode-tools, you can simply install the OpenMandriva package, as it doesn't contain any binaries:
http://abf-downloads.rosalinux.ru/cooke ... noarch.rpm

tuned probably too, find it via http://pkgs.org/search/tuned
You can report that as a package request, after searching if it hasn't been reported yet already: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_repor ... ge_request

What you probably want to do is run powertop with the --html switch to output into an html file, as in that html file
it will list all the command to switch the tunables under the "Tuning" tab.

You can also change the upper and lower frequency of your CPU via cpupower, or use a different governor.
It is configured via /etc/sysconfig/cpupower . You might want to look at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=719

For some kernel modules like graphics driver or wireless driver it might be worth investigating if they have more settings to control power.
See e.g. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=922

[doktor5000]

What you probably want to do is run powertop with the --html switch to output into an html file, as in that html file
it will list all the command to switch the tunables under the "Tuning" tab.

Yes!

In addition Mageia has kernels specifically created for laptop use:
kernel-tmb-laptop

[ahealthyearth]

For laptop-mode-tools, you can simply install the OpenMandriva package, as it doesn't contain any binaries:
http://abf-downloads.rosalinux.ru/cooke ... noarch.rpm

tuned probably too, find it via http://pkgs.org/search/tuned
You can report that as a package request, after searching if it hasn't been reported yet already: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_repor ... ge_request

What you probably want to do is run powertop with the --html switch to output into an html file, as in that html file
it will list all the command to switch the tunables under the "Tuning" tab.

You can also change the upper and lower frequency of your CPU via cpupower, or use a different governor.
It is configured via /etc/sysconfig/cpupower . You might want to look at viewtopic.php?f=7&t=719

For some kernel modules like graphics driver or wireless driver it might be worth investigating if they have more settings to control power.
See e.g. viewtopic.php?f=7&t=922

Thank you doktor5000!
Those were excellent suggestions. I did as you suggested and requested the 'tuned-adm' package.
Powertop --html gives you suggestions but I found you can auto adjust them by doing the command: powertop --auto-tune
I haven't tried adjusting the cpu via cpupower. When I had a Nokia N900 smartphone/tablet I use to downclock the cpu frequency. But as I got more into linux on my desktop and laptop, I have been told adjusting the cpu is very dangerous, and 'ondemand' governor is most likely the best all around choice. But I will take a look at the link.
Even with the powertop auto-tune, the battery is slightly better but still no where around that of what Im getting now.
I will wait and see if they approve me request for the tuned-adm package.
Thank you for the excellent suggestions and help.
Adrian

[ahealthyearth]

What you probably want to do is run powertop with the --html switch to output into an html file, as in that html file
it will list all the command to switch the tunables under the "Tuning" tab.

Yes!

In addition Mageia has kernels specifically created for laptop use:
kernel-tmb-laptop

I saw the kernel-tmb-laptop in the repos. And I thought about trying it but Im not sure how to install it. When I had installed the distro: Manjaro they had a convenient tool where you could choose a kernel between several preinstalled kernels. I havent done enough digging and research into Magiea to know if they have such a tool. Do I just install the the kernel to enable it? If not, how do I enable the kernel-tmb-laptop?
Thank you,
Adrian

[doktor5000]

Yes, you simply install it and select it in the bootloader on next boot. You current kernel will still be the default kernel.

[ahealthyearth]

Yes, you simply install it and select it in the bootloader on next boot. You current kernel will still be the default kernel.

Thank you doktor5000!
On a side note, I would like to jump in and try it on the live iso, but once I install the kernel and boot it I would lose the current session on the live iso and also all the installed software. If anyone has enabled the kernel-tmb-laptop could you please inform me as to what kind of powersavings I am likely to see.
Thank you,
Adrian

[daniewicz]

I have an older macbook pro running Mageia 3 64 bit. Using kernel-tmb-laptop and powertop and a video card that is underclocked. I have better life on linux than I do on OSX. I broke powertop somehow months ago and now I cannot get a wattage readout but it was nowhere near 6W. More like 10W or 11W.

[ahealthyearth]

I have an older macbook pro running Mageia 3 64 bit. Using kernel-tmb-laptop and powertop and a video card that is underclocked. I have better life on linux than I do on OSX. I broke powertop somehow months ago and now I cannot get a wattage readout but it was nowhere near 6W. More like 10W or 11W.

Thank you daniewicz for your feedback.
So I ended up taking the plunge and installed Mageia on my Asus 1005ha, even though the tuned-adm package request has not yet been reviewed or accepted. I installed and enabled the kernel-tmb-laptop and did some testing. I installed powertop (and calibrated it) and laptop mode tools, and the battery life was roughly about 5hours on idle. Unfortunately even without wifi the battery is about the same. I get 2 to 4 hours on constant usage. And it's almost the same with the default kernel. Unfortunately the powersaving is not nearly enough to make it through the day with one charge.
I'll just have to wait to see if they approved the tuned-adm package.
Thank you,
Adrian

[doktor5000]

To simply test the effect of tuned presets, you can install the package from OpenMandriva as mentioned previously.
FWIW, it will probably not be added in near future to the Mageia repository I'd say. For completeness, this is the link to your package request, which I've edited slightly:
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15484

For completeness's sake and also to allow others to follow up on bug reports you create, please always post the link to it in the respective thread, thanks.

[ahealthyearth]

To simply test the effect of tuned presets, you can install the package from OpenMandriva as mentioned previously.
FWIW, it will probably not be added in near future to the Mageia repository I'd say. For completeness, this is the link to your package request, which I've edited slightly:
https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15484

For completeness's sake and also to allow others to follow up on bug reports you create, please always post the link to it in the respective thread, thanks.

Thank you again doktor5000 for editing the package request! And I apologize for not posting the links where they belong on the package request I created. And I understand completely that the package may take some time; and won't be release until later.
I did take your suggestion and tried to install the tuned-adm package from the Openmandriva Cooker, but it said:
Some requested packages cannot be installed:
tuned-2.4.1-5.noarch (due to unsatisfied pythonegg(decorator))
Continue installation anyway?
When I continued, it failed to install. I checked if I had pythonegg(decorator) and I do have it currently installed on Mageia's repos. I also downloaded the pythonegg(decorator) from the Mandriva Cooker and tried to install it. However that also was missing dependencies. And every package I downloaded there required more and more dependencies. I even tried to install the tuned package from Opensuse and fedora and it was the same issue.
I think I'll just wait for now.
Thank you,
Adrian

[doktor5000]

The two Mageia packages for this provide slightly different things for this, that's why that Require is not matched:

┌─[doktor5000@Mageia5]─[07:11:36]─[~]
└──╼ urpmq --provides python3-decorator
python3-decorator[== 3.4.0-9.mga5]
pythonegg(3)(decorator)[== 3.4.0]
┌─[doktor5000@Mageia5]─[07:12:15]─[~]
└──╼ urpmq --provides python-decorator
python-decorator[== 3.4.0-9.mga5]
pythonegg(2)(decorator)[== 3.4.0]