New owner: Linux on X61s, battery life ?

[maurizio.dececco]

First of all, i'd like to thank all the people writing to this forum.

I have been lurking for a few weeks while trying to take a decision on which laptop will substitute my old Dell Latitude C400; i finally ruled out the nice but too expensive X300 to opt for an X61s, after trying a colleague's X61 and realising that i *can* actually work with a TrackPoint.

The machine is ordered, so i start to have real questions :->

I would like to double boot my x61s, using Windows XP mostly for music and sound processing while on the move (Cubase and Finale), and Linux for my professional activity (writing docs, browsing internet and reading mail).

I understand that most of the people would do the contrary (having fun with Linux, working on Windows), but i actually work in the Free Software business, so i have fun on Windows to get a break. :->

The first question is: having a double boot machine would stop any of the nice ThinkAdvantage technology to work ?

The second question: since i would mostly use Linux while travelling, the battery life under Linux would be a major issue.

How the X61s behave from this point of view under Linux (i will have an 8 cell battery), which tip and trick would you suggest, and does any Linux distribution behave better than the other on the X61s ?

Thanks for your attention,
Maurizio De Cecco

MOD EDIT: Moved to Linux forum.

[FALK]

1. Don't think so

2. The battery life in linux is nowhere as good as in windows, but try:

# powertop from intel, gives suggestions to minimize power usage
# enable powersaving on wifi (if intel), also partly solves the problem with hot palmrest.
# disable all kinds of logging and mount drive with the noatime and noadirtime options
# use a simple and efficient window-manager to save cpu-cycles.
# look at http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_re ... onsumption

[pibach]

2. The battery life in linux is nowhere as good as in windows, but try:

I am running Xubuntu Hardy on a x61t. Battery life is a lot better than Vista or XP. I get 6+ hours with Xubuntu and 5 hours on Vista (web/office@50%brightness, fully tweaked with RMclock undervolting etc).

[bodiless]

When installing linux, if you choose to install grub on the MBR, which most people do in a dual boot situation, you will loose the thinkvantage or F11 key function. I did the same mistake and had to recover the factory installation. The solution is to install grub on a separate /boot partition and use the windows bootloader to select either windows or you linux distro. That way the MBR remains intact and the blue thinkvantage key will continue to work. If you search this forum and elsewhere you will find many informations on how to install grub on another partition and how to make an entry of grub into vista's bootmanager with the dd command.

I would also strongly recomment before you start installing linux to create those recovery disks. It isn't mentioned anywhere in the packaging information that you do need to create them and it will save you a lot of hassle later on if anything goes wrong.

[lightweight]

x86 SMP uses less watts than 64 bit for me. You can also use many of Powertop's suggested flags which are not supported on 64 bit kernels, and their flags are default on Debian now (and presumably Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, etc).

Use a distribution to load into RAM and you won't access the harddisk, and you could still mount it when you want media and such if you wanted. You could make you own using your favorite distribution, a few modules and packages, and linux-live.org scripts (same guy responsible for Slax).

There's at least a couple good threads on power saving in the Linux forum.

[aliencam]

i know it may not be exactly the same, but my X61t gets 7+ hours of battery with ubuntu x64 and powertop , while windows XP gets about 4 hours with wifi.

[pibach]

i know it may not be exactly the same, but my X61t gets 7+ hours of battery with ubuntu x64 and powertop , while windows XP gets about 4 hours with wifi.

This sounds great. Could you give a brief howto?

[aliencam]

This sounds great. Could you give a brief howto?

to tell you the truth i don't think i could tell you everything i've done... i know i spend about 1.5 days just optimizing battery power, and learning everything about it (those were the second and third days i had ever owned a laptop, let alone a thinkpad, so i had a lot to learn)

the resources I used mostly were this forum, IBM's Powertop, and thinkwiki.

what I can tell you i did was to disable compiz, bluetooth, put audio on mute, and brightness all the way down when I need longer battery life. In addition to that, using powertop every time i need more life.

you can read about powertop at lesswatts.org

the thread that helped me a lot with setting up my installation (and a litle with power) http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... c&start=30


edit: and i was mistaken earlier. i rarely get up to 7 if i have wifi on, usually more around 6, but without wifi i can get past 7. and it was windows VISTA that only gets 4 hours with wifi on, i dont think i've ever done a full charge/kill on XP...