Re: Ubuntu for laptops
in-line :- On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 05:57, Matthew Garrett mj...@srcf.ucam.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:40:05PM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: a. Lots of background services which are started by default. Background services are either doing something (in which case the user expects them to be doing so), are idle (and therefore not consuming any energy) or are buggy (in which case they should just be fixed). Couldn't there be a use-case where there are background services which are normal in a PC (read desktop) environment but perhaps are not suited for laptops. The basic assumption being that most of the hardware is mostly a generation or two older then desktop and is severly constrainted. b. Also the kenel as well as packages should behave in a manner which make battery life longer. This is not the case at the present . For e.g. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?s=84bfb8cd28895385bee083cc30eed476p=1267038#post1267038 No. If there are kernel bugs that increase power consumption, they need fixing for desktops and servers as well as laptops. Right. The use-cases are unique to laptops and laptops in battery-mode. Any benefits on this are surely going to overlap with UNR as well. (as it suffers from similar constraints) The use-cases are not unique to laptops. I thought perhaps . Good to be corrected. Found something interesting as well. (perhaps) http://lwn.net/Articles/351013/ specifically comments relating to boot speed and power waste. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
shirish शिरीष wrote: On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 05:57, Matthew Garrett mj...@srcf.ucam.org wrote: On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:40:05PM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: a. Lots of background services which are started by default. Background services are either doing something (in which case the user expects them to be doing so), are idle (and therefore not consuming any energy) or are buggy (in which case they should just be fixed). Agreed - and this was triggered by a comparison to battery-life in Windows. Windows starts a heap of services too. Couldn't there be a use-case where there are background services which are normal in a PC (read desktop) environment but perhaps are not suited for laptops. There could be general tendencies, but many of us have simply stopped using desktop machines. My laptop runs _literally_ everything. It's my primary development testbed. The basic assumption being that most of the hardware is mostly a generation or two older then desktop and is severly constrainted. I'm not at all sure that's a valid assumption. No. If there are kernel bugs that increase power consumption, they need fixing for desktops and servers as well as laptops. Right. Absolutely. -- derek -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Ubuntu for laptops
Hi all, I have a friend who has a ubuntu laptop . She was complaining that the OS eats her batteries more than Windows XP. A little searching around gave me many examples of this. For e.g. https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/laptop-testing-team/2009-February/001239.html and http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/08/25/157209 Lots of what is said there in the comments as well is also pretty relevant. Has there been any thought of having a distribution specifically for laptop users (similar to the initiative taken for netbooks - Ubuntu Netbook remix) otherwise laptop owners have to go through quite few hoops to make it less battery intensive. -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 09:37:01PM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: Has there been any thought of having a distribution specifically for laptop users (similar to the initiative taken for netbooks - Ubuntu Netbook remix) otherwise laptop owners have to go through quite few hoops to make it less battery intensive. What would the differences be? -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
Matthew Garrett wrote: What would the differences be? If you google for ext4 and battery life you can find quite a bit of discussion about how the default filesystem configuration prevents the disk from being able to go to sleep. The bottom line is optimizing for performance is more or less inversely proportional to optimizing for low energy consumption. So yes, it would be useful to have a laptop-optimized version. -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 11:40 -0500, Patrick Goetz wrote: If you google for ext4 and battery life you can find quite a bit of discussion about how the default filesystem configuration prevents the disk from being able to go to sleep. The bottom line is optimizing for performance is more or less inversely proportional to optimizing for low energy consumption. So yes, it would be useful to have a laptop-optimized version. I wouldn't like to see a different version, that makes two problems: 1) More complexity with managing a version. 2) No control when the laptop is plugged into the wall. What would be more ideal is to sort out the file system driver so it behaved differently when it's on battery power (or in any kind of energy conservation mode). Regards, Martin Owens -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
Martin Owens wrote: What would be more ideal is to sort out the file system driver so it behaved differently when it's on battery power (or in any kind of energy conservation mode). Based on having spent a few days reading through the massive ext4 debate that occurred between the 2.6.29 and 2.6.30 kernel releases, this seems hard to nearly impossible and would add additional complexity to everyone's installation through a much more complicated kernel driver. In particular, if this were easy to implement, Ted T'so would probably have already done it. There are simply too many different ways to optimize; it seems unlikely that any one kernel configuration can be bent to meet all needs. The next generation filesystems such as ZFS/btrfs seem even further removed from these kinds of features, but I'm just speculating about that. A lot of interesting discussion can be found here: http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/12/delayed-allocation-and-the-zero-length-file-problem/ http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2009/03/15/dont-fear-the-fsync/ and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/317781?comments=all -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
at bottom :- On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 22:16, Martin Owens docto...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 11:40 -0500, Patrick Goetz wrote: If you google for ext4 and battery life you can find quite a bit of discussion about how the default filesystem configuration prevents the disk from being able to go to sleep. The bottom line is optimizing for performance is more or less inversely proportional to optimizing for low energy consumption. So yes, it would be useful to have a laptop-optimized version. I wouldn't like to see a different version, that makes two problems: 1) More complexity with managing a version. 2) No control when the laptop is plugged into the wall. What would be more ideal is to sort out the file system driver so it behaved differently when it's on battery power (or in any kind of energy conservation mode). Regards, Martin Owens Its not just the system driver, there are quite a few issues :- a. Lots of background services which are started by default. b. Also the kenel as well as packages should behave in a manner which make battery life longer. This is not the case at the present . For e.g. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?s=84bfb8cd28895385bee083cc30eed476p=1267038#post1267038 I'm sure there would be many more instances if one looked at it. The use-cases are unique to laptops and laptops in battery-mode. Any benefits on this are surely going to overlap with UNR as well. (as it suffers from similar constraints) -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 22:40 +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: The use-cases are unique to laptops and laptops in battery-mode. Any benefits on this are surely going to overlap with UNR as well. (as it suffers from similar constraints) I can see it also effecting these new cloud computing servers which are supposed to be able to conserve energy when required. I know they go into suspend, but disk sleep is surely the first step in getting good power management. I know Tso is an awesome guy, his ext4 presentation at UDS Jaunty was a highlight for me so if he says it's too hard to do, then we might just have to suck it. I'm an optimist, if these fine kernel folks have a problem thrust upon them, they will likely solve it somehow. More resources required? Regards, Martin Owens -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
in-line :- 2009/9/22 Martin Owens docto...@gmail.com: On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 22:40 +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: The use-cases are unique to laptops and laptops in battery-mode. Any benefits on this are surely going to overlap with UNR as well. (as it suffers from similar constraints) I can see it also effecting these new cloud computing servers which are supposed to be able to conserve energy when required. I know they go into suspend, but disk sleep is surely the first step in getting good power management. I know Tso is an awesome guy, his ext4 presentation at UDS Jaunty was a highlight for me so if he says it's too hard to do, then we might just have to suck it. I'm an optimist, if these fine kernel folks have a problem thrust upon them, they will likely solve it somehow. More resources required? I guess so. Although I don't know who could drive this initiative. I have zero programming knowledge although could help in finding bugs and stuff. Also looking from past experience (w.r.t. ubuntu) it takes couple of releases to have things right. So even if its discussed and soft-launched today, it would take anything between a year or a bit more to have its benefits coming in. Regards, Martin Owens -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
in-line :- 2009/9/22 Martin Owens docto...@gmail.com: On Tue, 2009-09-22 at 22:40 +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: The use-cases are unique to laptops and laptops in battery-mode. Any benefits on this are surely going to overlap with UNR as well. (as it suffers from similar constraints) I can see it also effecting these new cloud computing servers which are supposed to be able to conserve energy when required. I know they go into suspend, but disk sleep is surely the first step in getting good power management. I read two articles :- http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Fglrx http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_make_use_of_Graphics_Chips_Power_Management_features I do know that recent kernels have KMS built-in http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=kernel_modesettingnum=1 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=articleitem=ubuntu_ati_kmsnum=1 But what is not known to me is do they use the features that were outlined about a year back on the wiki ? It would be nice to know what you guys think of all this ? -- Regards, Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com 065C 6D79 A68C E7EA 52B3 8D70 950D 53FB 729A 8B17 -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 11:40:27AM -0500, Patrick Goetz wrote: If you google for ext4 and battery life you can find quite a bit of discussion about how the default filesystem configuration prevents the disk from being able to go to sleep. The bottom line is optimizing for performance is more or less inversely proportional to optimizing for low energy consumption. So yes, it would be useful to have a laptop-optimized version. As far as filesystems go, pretty much everything that improves battery life does so by reducing the number of accesses - which also improves performance. I don't think that's the tradeoff you're thinking about. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
Re: Ubuntu for laptops
On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 10:40:05PM +0530, shirish शिरीष wrote: a. Lots of background services which are started by default. Background services are either doing something (in which case the user expects them to be doing so), are idle (and therefore not consuming any energy) or are buggy (in which case they should just be fixed). b. Also the kenel as well as packages should behave in a manner which make battery life longer. This is not the case at the present . For e.g. http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?s=84bfb8cd28895385bee083cc30eed476p=1267038#post1267038 No. If there are kernel bugs that increase power consumption, they need fixing for desktops and servers as well as laptops. The use-cases are unique to laptops and laptops in battery-mode. Any benefits on this are surely going to overlap with UNR as well. (as it suffers from similar constraints) The use-cases are not unique to laptops. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- Ubuntu-devel-discuss mailing list Ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel-discuss
