Kernel Recompile Mint Linux

[shankar.viswan-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org (Shankar Viswanathan)]

On Tue, Nov 17, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Jerry Feldman <gaf-mNDKBlG2WHs at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> I would take a much closer look not so much at the CPU, but at power
> management. What is your time interval before the display goes to sleep.
> What setting do you have when you close the lid on battery power.
> One of the major uses of power is the display. Certainly every little
> thing is a component, and knowing how to tune a Linux and Unix system is
> very good experience, although not as necessary today as in the past.
>
> On 11/17/2009 08:28 AM, Chris O'Connell wrote:
>> I'm running Mint Linux on a netbook (an MSI Wind U100). ?The speed is OK,
>> but the battery life is not super great. ?The battery life is much extended
>> running Windows XP. ?I figure if I can limit the CPU usage by
>> eliminating unnecessary items from loading I can increase the battery life
>> and speed at the same time.
<snip>

If you do want to examine CPU power state residency ratios and causes
of CPUs having to exit low power states, Intel has a good tool for
Linux:
http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/
It also gives helpful suggestions (usually) on what you can do to
decrease CPU power consumption: e.g. command to turn off Bluetooth if
not using it.

And agree on Jerry's point about CPU not being the dominant power hog
in a laptop system: display backlight and rotating media are the
bigger culprits for common laptop usage scenarios (i.e. browser and
basic office productivity apps).

And watch out for the flash plugin: that thing is notorious!

-Shankar