Ubuntu 11.10 + Thinkpad T520 = abysmal battery life?

[slugg]

Hey guys. I just got my T520 a couple weeks ago and I'm loving it. It's been a total champ in Windows 7. I have the 9 cell battery.

Now, when running Ubuntu 11.10 (64 bit), I get less than half the battery life I do in Windows 7. In Windows, I get 8 hours easily, without any extra effort to save battery life other than picking the "maximum battery life" option in the Lenovo software suite. In Ubuntu 11.10, I get about 3, *maybe* 4 hours.

I'm running Jupiter and have it set to the "Power Saver" performance mode. I have my screen brightness lower than I do in Windows. Not sure what else I can do...

Besides the battery life, everything seems to be working quite well right out of the box! I can't seem to find a way to turn off the bluetooth, but I'm sure I'll run into it.

Do you guys have any other tips? What's your battery life in Linux?

[wolfman]

On my T410, battery life in Ubuntu 10.10 is only a few minutes less than under Windows. I think you hit on one of the issues - with my previous X61, I had bluetooth (current T410 does not) and I wrote a script to remove the Bluetooth module. I never used Bluetooth and it seemed to be a power hog under Linux.

Also, do you have nVidia Optimus graphics? The experience I'm describing above is for Intel graphics - no discrete card (I specifically try and avoid discrete cards because my use cases don't require one and to remove a source of heat / failure related problems over time).

[slugg]

Yes, this is an Optimus enabled model. Any idea how I can disable the discrete graphics in Linux, but enable Optimus in Windows?

[wolfman]

Well, in the BIOS there is a switch that lets you pin the machine to integrated, discrete or optimus, but that would require you to change the BIOS based on the OS that you are planning to use... in other words, not a good solution.

There is a project, originally it was Bumblebee and now I believe it is called Ironhide that was supposed to have some Optimus capability available on Linux. I guess the issue is that nVidia isn't playing nice with Linux on this one.

I haven't tried either Bumblebee or Ironhide myself, but maybe someone here has and can give their thoughts on it...

[jib]

I have the exact same problem. Since I am using only Ubuntu for development and that battery life is important for me, I decided to change the BIOS settings of my T520 to use only the integrated card. The battery life is now close to what I was getting under Windows 7. I would be interested to hear if people have been successful with Ironhide though.

[deckoff]

I read somewhere that new kernel 3.2 fixes poor battery life, one could try to use the new 3.2 kernels(for 12.04) with 11.10.
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ Download debs here.

[ThinkRob]

I read somewhere that new kernel 3.2 fixes poor battery life, one could try to use the new 3.2 kernels(for 12.04) with 11.10.
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/ Download debs here.

That's unrelated to the power-management issues with Optimus. If you're affected by a BIOS with buggy ASPM capability reporting, the new detection code in the mainline kernels may improve battery life slightly. If not, or if you've already been forcing the use of ASPM, there will be no change. So no, it's not accurate to say that 3.2 "fixes poor battery life".