Can Ubuntu Linux Consume Less Power Than Windows?

An anonymous reader writes "Now that the big Linux kernel power regression has been solved it looks like Ubuntu 11.04 can compete with Microsoft Windows 7 in terms of overall power usage. New tests revealed by Phoronix show the power consumption of Ubuntu 11.04 vs. Windows 7 operating systems. On a range of different systems, the power consumption of the Linux OS was comparable to that of Windows except for a few select workloads and systems."

Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the

[ratboy666]

Please read the article:

"The respective proprietary graphics driver for each operating system was installed"

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[Andy Dodd]

11.04 seems to include a kernel with LOTS of regressions, or the Ubuntu maintainers added some to the kernel/modules packages.

For example, the wireless drivers for Ralink RT2860 chipsets were rock solid from 9.04 to 10.10, but were completely broken after an 11.04 update. Even after doing some module blacklist magic, the wireless drivers now perform horrifically and fail to connect very often.

Re:Can it crash less often than Windows?

[ngileadi]

Well, I don't know what problem spiffmastercow had, but this bug [launchpad.net] has been around since the launch of 11.04, and crashes my laptop on a regular basis.

Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worries

[gamrillen]

Whenever Canonical releases a new version of Ubuntu, I'm always game to take it for a test drive. I use an EeePC 1005HA netbook and a VirtualBox VM (Windows 7 x64 host) to do my testing. For the last three versions (10.10, 11.04, and 11.10) I've had issues with the netbook overheating and shutting down the hardware. Additionally, the sleep/hibernation functionality never seems to work just right. Sometimes, when I close the netbook, it won't go to sleep at all and the LCD screen will stay turned on. Other times, the netbook will sleep peacefully, but won't boot back up when I open the lid (as set in my preferences) or hit the power button. I have to remove the battery and do a hard boot. As for the VM, Ubuntu runs incredibly slow even with the guest additions installed. I have to sometimes triple click on single click buttons to select something, and Gnome likes to generate random error messages. On the flip side, I can run Windows 7 x32, Windows 7 x64, and even Windows XP x32 on the netbook, and won't have any of the issues I see with Ubuntu. The same goes for using the three Windows variants mentioned above in the VM. Yes, less power consumption is a great thing, and yes it's awesome that interface tweaks are happening to make it prettier, but until stability issues with fairly common chip-sets are resolved, I won't be using Ubuntu on a daily basis. However, Linux Mint, which is based on the most current stable release of Ubuntu seems to take all of Ubuntu's shortcomings and clean them up. Mint just seems... tighter. Everything flows better, and I don't see the glitches that I normally see in Ubuntu.