Ubuntu 12.04 Battery problem

Question

I have my laptop ( Dell Inspiron 14R) on dual boot with Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7. While using Windows 7, I used to get about 2.5-3 hours on battery fully charged (with my cellphone connected for 3g Internet). The battery is almost 2 years old. But in Ubuntu 12.04, I'm getting only about 1-1.5 hrs on battery.

I tried installing jupiter, also tried some tweaks that were mentioned in the forums, like editing the grub file. But nothing seems to work. I am not sure if any app is draining the battery. The one application that I use always is firefox. It's always open.

Is there any way I could get at least 2.5 hrs of battery time?

Answer 1

I had the same problem! Installing Bumblebee really worked for me!

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bumblebee/stable

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install bumblebee bumblebee-nvidia linux-headers-generic

Answer 2

As the comments suggest, this is most likely related to the kernel bug, which drains laptop batteries quite fast due to an inefficiencies and too many wakeups and I/O errors.

All you can do at this stage is wait, or contribute to the kernel.

Answer 3

try to setup the laptop tools :

sudo apt-get install laptop-mode-tools

powertop went from a discharge of +/- 42W to an average 30W.

Answer 4

Try this:

For installing:

sudo apt-get install pm-utils

For activating:

sudo pm-powersave true

For deactiviting:

sudo pm-powersave false

Worked for me.