Save a little energy, especially if you depend on a battery, it is a very good practice. The low autonomy of the new portable or mobile devices, although each time it is improving with the new electronic technologies and with the optimization of the operating systems and the software, it still remains a big problem. In GNU / Linux it has been a remarkable problem that is gradually being solved.
Well, in this article, we will try that you can get more performance from your battery and autonomy, therefore mobility, increase on your device with Linux. Specifically we are going to explain how can you do it from debian, although it also works for Ubuntu and derivatives using the same steps described here. Although in the kernel and in power management that this recently can be done without programming knowledge, we can do some configurations to improve it.
The tricks you can carry out on your Debian (or preferred distro) to save a bit of power are:
- Disable WiFi and Bluetooth, since these connectivity devices consume even if they are not being used. And if they are not being used, with more reason to deactivate them from the main menu (this may vary depending on the desktop environment you have, but from the control panel or the status bar it can usually be done).
- Lower brightness It is very important, not only to avoid damaging your eyesight if you have it too high, but also so that the screen does not demand so much electricity and reduces consumption. Do not put it so low that you damage your eyesight by forcing it to see what is on the screen ... But you can do it from the control panel in the screen options or even with a combination of keys if your laptop has them.
- Close all the applications that you are not using. If you have a demon running and you're not using it either, stop it too, so they won't be consuming resources in the background.
- If you have SD or other cards, USBs, etc., inserted, remove them, this can be a contributor to consumption, since these devices demand current. Although other tutorials also advise removing inserted CDs or DVDs or BDs, I am not sure if this reduces consumption, since the disc is not running while it is not being read and the only consumption that is usually made extra, if not You take it out, that's when you start the computer, which begins to read it, but then stops.
- Avoid using Adobe Flash it is also a good option, since it is running in the background consuming. Although many websites still depend on it for its operation despite the fact that the future is HTML5 ...
- Use a lightweight browser it is also a good option. Chrome, for example, is quite resource consuming, forcing the battery to drain faster. Be careful, just as recommended or even more is to use a lightweight desktop environment or a whole lightweight distribution!
- Take a tour of the control panel or the configuration options of your distro and see the power settings it is not too much to change some values according to our needs. For example, you can set the automatic screen shutdown when not in use, the system sleep timer, etc.
- And I add common sense, as it can also help us save.
Hello, the title should be changed from "PC" to "Portable".
Greetings.
Hello,
When I thought of the title, the first thing that came to mind was "portable", but I quickly changed it to "PC", as I do not want to specify for a simple reason. There is always talk of saving when you have a battery, that is, when we have a mobile device, in fact this article is more aimed at that ... But I do not want you to forget that some of these practices can also be carried out on computers connected to the network, not only in laptops, to save energy.
All the best. Good appreciation, but it has a reason ...
Every reason that PC says, since lowering energy consumption does not only apply to laptops.
For example, in a laboratory with several computers connected simultaneously, it is appreciated to achieve that these consume less energy, since it is less load for the electrical circuit.