Saw this somewhere: http://www.linuxpowertop.org/

As a first step, Intel is releasing PowerTOP, a tool that helps you find what software is using the most power. By fixing (or closing) these applications or processes, you can immediately see the power savings in the tool. You'll also see the estimated time left for battery power if you are running a laptop. The Tips&Tricks page has fixes for a lot of the issues that are already found. Join our mailing list to participate in this effort to get Linux to use less power.

Pretty neat. Doesn't compile on my old crusty slackware box but going to try it again on my Ubuntu laptop when I get home.

couldn't you just ps and sort by user time then kill?

Well I am guessing that this gives more accurate numbers as it measures the number of "wakeups"

wouldn't cumulative time be a better measure though?

Not if its not directly proportional to how much power it uses, which I'm guessing its not?

yeah i have no idea to be honesti just would have assumed the raw amount of cpu time a process has used would be enough for a rough guide line

also, i don't know much about ubuntu, but i know i've played with my VM settings on my linux box to stop it from swapping so much s*** out. the standard vm is horrible on default settings for it. i see there is a laptop mode (dunno what it does), but perhaps you could play with those settings too to help improve battery life as i'm sure hd access kills it.

edit: come to think of it wake up from swap would make a big difference to power usage. so i can sort of see the point now. still, i'd imagine waking up in ram wouldn't hurt battery life much.

last edited by nF at 18:44:01 14/Jun/07

too to help improve battery life as i'm sure hd access kills it.

I was always under the impression linux worked mostly in memory? Or is that only for removable drives that it doesn't read/write to the physical drive on data access but instead waits until you unmount it before it writes?

thats file access

by default it'll swap out programs to get more memory in order to cache s*** like that

by default it'll swap out programs to get more memory in order to cache s*** like that

Yep, by default the Linux kernel swaps out data eventually, whether you think it's necessary or not.

There's a way to force it not to, but from memory it had some disadvantages/side-effects.