> Linux has drivers for devices shutdown when not used and idle power > states, pretty much like Windows has. Android, who is Linux derived, > took this concept to a much higher level. > Think of a wireless card and you can see on man ath(4): " The driver > does not fully enable power-save operation of the chip; consequently > power use is suboptimal." This is one of the simplest example.
I configured a very stripped down linux kernel and it idles at about the same watt usage as OpenBSD. I guess it's a matter of figuring out which drivers or kernel features are saving so much power. I flashed my bios to the newest one they provide and Linux uses even less power; I did not see much difference on OpenBSD.
