Can Ubuntu Linux Consume Less Power Than Windows? 225
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."
Yes it can. (Score:2)
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Heck, even if your battery did by chance run out, you could probably just make one from some gum, a few lemons and a couple pieces of metal.
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...but a meat battery still sounds like something good for a zombie movie
That reminds me of a nickname we had for your mom....
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Yeah, but my power bill doesn't have a line item for "energy provided for conversion into another form".
So, for purposes of discussion, the heat, light and mechanical action it turns into is "consumption".
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Again, ignoring the technical specifics of "power" vs "energy" ... from their perspective, if you pull in the power to put it into a battery, it's consumption. The fact that it's available for later use is largely irrelevant.
If I buy a gallon of gas and put it into a red plastic can, that doesn't mean that from the pump perspect
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I expect nothing less than the high quality pedantry I've come to expect from Slashdot over the years.
And you haven't disappointed. ;-)
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No, it can't.
I swallowed a battery earlier today, and I think that proves you wrong. Also, grrrkfa;dlsjdkafjsdiedjiruacvnc
"Can" is not "Does" (Score:5, Insightful)
It is possible it could consume less power, but that doesn't necessarily mean it always does. Different hardware, specialty drivers, default settings vs tweaked settings - come on?
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I get really clean font rendering actually (using Ubuntu and Compiz). There's a tool to change how the fonts are rendered as well but I haven't really touched it - the settings are all defaults. What are you comparing to?
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Could you tell us what kind of hardware do you have and what software do you use?
I'm really interested, because my new HP ProBook can barely run 2 hours on battery on Linux with a light load, but the specs said 4-4.5 hours. Now I know they're lying and that I could stretch the life by totally dimming the screen, but I doubt they would claim twice the battery life. It was even worse before I installed the proprietary graphics driver by AMD, so I presume there are some bad drivers here. On the other hand, my
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Thanks, I started reading into it and found this, right on the KDE page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KDE#How_to_enable_Cpufreq_based_power_saving [archlinux.org]
Can it crash less often than Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
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And while that shouldn't happen at all, at least with Ubuntu you can often recover from such a state by switching to a terminal and restarting Compiz and/or X. Not the case with Windows.
Re:Can it crash less often than Windows? (Score:4, Funny)
Really? I never you could recover from a kernel panic by switching to a terminal and restarting X! Mod parent INFORMATIVE!!!++ Thank you so much!!
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You sure it's *really* a kernel panic though? I read bug reports all day, and the first thing you learn is that most people use terms like that incorrectly.
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Thanks!
The proprietary ATI drivers are pure hell, but I'd be surprised if that alone could cause a kernel panic.
Re:Can it crash less often than Windows? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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You know seriously, I used to have crashing problems like pretty much everyone else but two things have changed:
1. My use of Windows is limited to "what I need." I don't install crap of any kind. If I don't use it, it doesn't get installed or will soon be removed if it was there.
2. Windows uptimes have increased for me over the years. Perhaps it's all the bug fixes and what have you, but whatever the case, I don't have as many problems. (Other users, however, still seem to have the same problems, so it'
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It's not all to MS's credit? I thought the OS was there to provide resources to applications. One example might be the "still on" resource.
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I've been having kernel panics regularly, I recently figured out that it's due to "hardware acceleration" in the binary flashplayer, coupled with the open source video drivers (ati, for me). Right click on a flash animation and turn off hardware acceleration. And/or un-install that steaming pile of dung. Still, it shouldn't be causing kernel panics. I think the open source/drm drivers need work.
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As I recall windows 3(? maybe I'm thinking of 3.11, but I think I'm thinking of 3) was damn hard to crash...
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I gave it the old college try for two months but finally, after gritting my teeth for the last time, I made a beeline for the blank CD's and had Ubuntu installed over my lunch break.
Now, I can finally be productive with great tools integrated into the OS. SSH, bash, apt-get, tilda
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Might it be thermal shutdown? I had this issue after upgrading; apparently the new kernel does not play well with the (probably buggy) fan controller on some ThinkPads. After I blew the CPU fan slots through, it did not overheat any more.
Re:Can it crash less often than Windows? (Score:5, Insightful)
Since there's no telling if you have the same model or even brand of network, this conversation is a bit like "The fruit I ate had a hard shell, I almost cracked a tooth" "Mine didn't, perhaps your fruit was defective?" It's another easy way to blame something else, because how many have spare identical netbooks to rule that out? Sure it could happen, but it's far from the most likely explanation.
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It may not be the hardware. Non-LTS Ubuntus are full of regressions. Affects some significant minority of users, but not enough to affect ship date.
The worst regressions are always fixed in the next release. They are rarely backported to non-LTS, a strategy which is designed to keep you constantly upgrading. Except that once one regression is fixed, more creep up. If you're lucky, your won't be affected. But there are ALWAYS regressions.
I basically treat non-LTS Ubuntus as betas for the LTS. I don't expect
LTS vs non-LTS (Score:2)
I basically treat non-LTS Ubuntus as betas for the LTS. I don't expect them to work. I expect many things to be broken.
Yup, that's the truth: they are betas. I ran Warty and Breezy, but since Dapper (the first LTS), I've stuck with LTS releases on most of our boxes. Recently, I have not bothered installing non-LTS releases on any box; it just leads to too much grief. I have briefly looked at 10.10 and 11.04 on VMs, just the same way as I occasionally look at other distros.
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Things in life ought to progress, i.e. get better. This is especially true with FOSS. Software ought to get more stable, have more bugs eliminated over time. It's truly sad that basic software functions like file open dialogs get torn out and rewritten from scratch so much that the actual number of bugs in everyday functionality seems to remain relatively the same.
I suppose it's the usual emphasis on the shiny rather than the worky.
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Would be interested to know how you did updates. I always had problems with insufficient space to install the updates and such. Is there a trick?
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Heh (Score:2)
Can Ubuntu Linux Consume Less Power Than Windows?
Shouldn't it already? It's not like anything in Linux is causing the 3d acceleration to kick in.
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What about the compositing window managers (like Compiz)?
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Which will save power. The gfx card, as it happens, is rather good at doing window translation and compositing in hardware, seeing as that's what we use it for. A properly-designed gfx card (in a low-power state) and compositing WM should blow the pants off of a CPU solution. I don't know if this is the case (it depends on how far back an unloaded GFX card will throttle) but I wouldn't be super surprised
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Most Linux boxes don't have a monitor attached.
Least of all the ones running Ubuntu.
common development (Score:2)
I'd also wager that efficiency isnt solely in the hands of the ms/nix devs. If someone writes a shitty firmware for a hdd or disc drive that doesnt take power consumption into account its hardly the OS dev's fault
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Both operating systems are written in C, no? If thats the case, they should be able to compete.
Quote of the day...
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Both operating systems are written in C, no? If thats the case, they should be able to compete.
Ford F-150 and Smart 4Two both run on gasoline, no? If that's the case, they should be able to compete on MPG.
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F-150 and 4two running on gasoline is akin to a PC running on electricity. A more apt comparison might have been F-150 and 4two both using an IC engine, and i dont think thats the case with 4two.
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A more apt comparison might have been F-150 and 4two both using an IC engine, and i dont think thats the case with 4two.
What kind of engine would you expect it to have that runs on gasoline, but isn't internal combustion?
If you meant to say that it's a hybrid, then no, it's not (at least not the conventional variety).
TCP/IP stack (Score:2)
They've already had chunks of BSD-licensed code in their TCP/IP stack.
The problem is specifically GPLed code like Linux, because GPL license requires that when distributing software made with it, you need to distribute the source of said software (the same way as source was distributed to you) so that the users can - if they wan - tinker with it (exactly like you did to make your own software out of it). GPL is "here's the code. Do whatever you want, provided that the next person in the chain gets the same
Color Me Skeptical (Score:2)
I've run Debian derivatives going back to '06 on my laptops -- an HP, a Dell, and a Samsung (this was the point at which I could install Linux and not have to spend the next several hours getting the network card and wireless card to work with my existing hardware). However, I found that Linux consistently cut my laptop power by about 20-30% over Windows XP. Vista was worse, of course, as that had serious power issues on laptops at first, but now Windows 7 performs as good as or better than XP, as near as
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I suspect this is because, as found by Phoronix, Linux is unable to turn hardware off when it is not in use. This thanks to buggy ACPI or similar that the OEMs work around in their own drivers for Windows, but that the Linux devs have to find out about the hard way. Hell, not too long ago there was a desktop motherboard that was unbootable if Linux was honest about itself. This thanks to a garbage ACPI entry for anything other then Windows.
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Any suggestions as to what I can do? Would an SSD be better?
Thanks.
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Um, that's probably a matter of poor cooling in the Acer laptop. There might be a lower-power mode you could set with hdparm, but spinning the disk down completely just isn't practical: it gets spun back up too much. And a good SSD might cost more than the laptop is worth--certainly more than a new hard disk.
Buy a new hard disk if you want, one that's quiet and cool--but that's no guarantee it will be cool in your laptop.
My suggestion: back up your data regularly, set aside some money to buy a new disk wh
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No Aero? (Score:2)
The video hardware is more efficient at rendering than the CPU, so this could skew the results quite a bit by potentially having Aero off.
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It could be worse, but given that things seem to be going in the Open CL direction, Linux should have the same access that MS does to the tools necessary to make that work.
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The regular person doesn't know that. This article hitting slashdot will reach a lot of people that won't know the difference. It should be a test of what you experience.
That depends. (Score:2)
For example, consider that newer laptop GPU setups (using NVIDIA Optimus and whatever ATI calls their equivalent) use "switchable graphics." Essentially the output device is always a cheap integrated device, but when real GPU power is needed the OS will seamlessly switch over to a separate, bona fide GPU and have its framebuffers forwarded to the integrated chip.
This requires kernel-level support for the switchable graphics systems -- suppor
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There is the bumblebee project for Nvidia that seems to have some progress.
With or without Anti-Virus? (Score:2)
Just don't give me any "base system" crap, test it with a real system running real background tasks. A windows machine running anti-virus real time protection may add significantly in terms of power. Multiplied over an entire office, that could add up. But I dunno what they used, cause I think the Phoronix website needs a little more power to withstand /.
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Most AV suites are active less than 1% of the time on modern systems. Yes, they do add *some* cost, but it's hardly likely to sway the results by much.
Besides, AV is not strictly required. If you know what you're doing and don't get particularly unlucky, you can get by for years without it. If you are sufficiently unlucky, you can get completely taken over even if you know what you're doing and run up-to-date AV as well. I run a free and non-obtrusive AV program, but if it started having a noticable impact
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It's not a matter of whether or not they included 3D Compositing on Ubuntu. In Windows 7, Aero is the default view for Windows and should be treated as such. Almost no computer with Windows 7 doesn't include Aero.
Unfortunately the article is worded as if they simply used out of the box software. Windows 7, and Ubuntu. But the reailty is, out of the box, Windows 7 uses Aero. If they turned off Aero, that's not an out of the box test and it should be noted as such.
Power Consumed is the Least of my Ubuntu Worries (Score:4, Informative)
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Weird. I have a 1005HAB running 10.10 and it's fine other than Unity randomly crashing when closing a Firefox window (which doesn't surprise me given all the other Unity bugs).
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I have no problems with Ubuntu 11.04 suspend or hibernate on my Acer Aspire One (similar specs to an EeePC)
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Hmm, I was given the impression that stock Ubuntu is pretty dismal on netbooks. Try one of the netbook remixes that actually use the array kernel tuned for Atom chips and other netbook hardware.
My favorite was eeebuntu [eeebuntu.org] 3.0 , but it hasn't been updated recently while waiting for the devs to polish off their new Aurora distro.
I've also played with Fuduntu [fuduntu.org], which seems like a nice rpm-based distro, but my machine didn't survive a yum update. I might try again.
Then there's the Ubuntu Netbook Remix, which prob
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Um...
Wouldn't sleep/hibernate functionality be the job of the hosting OS?
Repeat after me, Ubuntu is not Linux ok (Score:5, Funny)
There are far more usable and frankly higher quality distros than anything that comes from Canonical.
I'll probably be shot down in flames but as a long term linux supporter (since slackware 1.1 on Floppies) I've seen it evolve beyond all recognition.
At first Ubuntu was a breath of freah air. It took the debian dinosaur and shook it alive. Now, they are changing things and IMHO not taking the user base with them. I know of at least 10 former Ubuntu fans who have jumped ship since 10.10 came out. The quality is just not there any more. Far too much is crammed into each release with little thought for fixing the bugs.
Non of their stuff seems complete. Or in agile dev speak, 'It is not done.'
This is totally wrong and is only storing up a vast reservior of technial debt for the future.
Let the flaming begin.
Anon coz I have to work closely with Canonical in my day job.
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We'll see how long that lasts, considering how recent decisions appear to be more about chasing people away than making a better distro. I was using Ubuntu, but I won't be using it anymore, considering how much crap I got when I upgraded last time. I'm sorry, but if you're going to have a release be unstable, the user should be given a heads up that they're upgrading to a development release.
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RotateLeftByte (797477) says:
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Anon coz I have to work closely with Canonical in my day job.
Uh oh. You're toast.
To be more on point, perhaps I'll be shot down in flames with you, but you're clearly correct. Ubuntu is far from the best ("highest quality") desktop distro, and it doesn't really make for an ideal server OS either, in light of the great Linux-based alternatives. I'm glad Canonical and Ubuntu exist because some of the projects they work on which set them apart may actually have broad appeal and be good for the "community" in the long run, but it is too bad it's them who have become
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No flames here. Only curiosity.
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Ok, some hardware needs extra parameters (Score:2)
All hardware has VPD strings (vital product data) strings that will tell you what you have. Why cant they come up with a simple cheat sheet of default parameters for the hardware. Write some code that walks the bus from CPU out to the last usb dongle and if any gotcha hardware comes up, then its "magic numbers" get added to the boot parameters.
If the hardware is trustworthy, fine...no parameters. If not, then it gets the fixes it needs. Are these rules being hard-coded in now? Why edit a file in a
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See, that would be great, except it doesn't work quite like that: Generally such hardware configuration would be entered into the driver, which works great... Until you end up with two or more pieces sharing the same VPD, but need slightly different handling rules. Or, what happens if a piece of hardware just plain lies about it's capibilities? That's the real problem, and it's hard to work around: Some driver may work perfectly well on the dev's device, but on someone's newer/older revision(etc.) it doesn'
trolls (Score:2)
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Of course, it *might* have not happened on their machines! AFAIK, it was due to some faulty bios tables, and only from some MFGRs. So, one same-spec'd model might not have the problem, and others might.
Linux 2.2 was better (Score:3)
Linux has seriously regressed over the past decade. I remember when Linux was a lite alternative to Windows 2000 and had power management in software that was orders of magnitude better.
Those days are long gone.
I am sick and tired of playing with releases of Ubuntu and Fedora hoping this one will truly be unique and beat Windows. Last March I switched back to Windows 7 as I do not have time to tinker and fool around with older releases of gnome to avoid unity/gnome-shell, and trying to enable hardware GPU accelerated web browsing experience. If you want it to perform as good as Windows, then just use Windows.
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The reason for this is that there have been a transition from APM to ACPI. The former leaves the details up to the OS, the latter have some kind of meta-language for "describing" the hardware capabilities. Sadly it was set up while MS was still doing their EEE thing, and so we have something that on paper should be a standard, but in reality only really work in Windows. The rest of the world have to second guess everything.
And EFI seems to be heading in the same direction...
Of course not (Score:2)
The Ubuntu system stays on.
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Considering they could just change the drop down to gnome or install lxde or xfce that seems a bit dramatic.
Re:Did they use the xfree ati / nv drivers or the (Score:5, Informative)
Please read the article:
"The respective proprietary graphics driver for each operating system was installed"
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Please read the article
That's a pretty serious request around this side of the Internet.
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The Internet has sides? I thought tubes only had one continuous side.
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No, that's a moebius strip. A tube has an inside and an outside.
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the "study" design altogether ist great.
from TFA:
A distinct selection of systems was sought after and the number of systems was just limited to time available. As only having a 64-bit edition of Windows 7 Professional, the hardware was also limited to newer platforms and no vintage hardware.
I love the laconic honesty; something that seems to be missing in other comparisons/tests/studies
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I thought that on ./ all that counted (except for laptops) was uptime
For one thing, laptops have become more popular and therefore more important. For another, better battery life means you're more likely to keep the laptop in suspend, which as far as I know preserves uptime, rather than shutdown.
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Besides this post being about laptops, less power consumption means greater uptime when running on a battery.
dot slash? (Score:2)
dot slash? ;> /.
-this is what we care about! spelling slashdot is
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For a desktop, it does cost you more to use more electricity. I'm not sure that it should be the only consideration, but now that my laptop can do most of what I want to do, there's no real reason for me to have a desktop other than gaming. The desktop at peak uses about 450 watts of electricty, granted it rarely if ever gets there, but then there's the monitor's use of energy. By contrast my laptop maxes out at 25 watts plus whatever electricity is wasted by the transformer.
Consequently, I might not even b
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That's frequently because of proprietary drivers and APIs to manage the power. My Thinkpad gets five to six hours of battery life, and the utility for stretching it only works under Windows, which means that I have to give that up if I want to run Linux on that particular computer.
Agreed (Score:2)
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Its really not anymore. Windows is bloated for backward compatibility and because of its features. If you smack all the same features and the backward compatibility stuff in Linux, well, it gets bloated.
If you setup a minimal Linux setup with only a CLI and no other GUI, it will be lightweight too. Only issue is that a lot of people won't like it that way =P
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I dunno... What I saw was close but slightly lower consumption on everything but the T61.