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I am a new user to Xubuntu 14.04. I have a 2010 HP Pavilion dv5 Notebook pc. Processor is AMD Turion II P540 Dual Core 4 GB ram RS880M - Mobility Radeon HD 4225/4250

This was a Win7 machine - I got the free upgrade to Win10 and things started to deteriorate. I wiped win10, got linux, and now have poor performance. My Win7 recovery discs won't work.

I have looked into this for several hours, and came away with the following tweaks: Added: echo battery > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state to /etc/rc.local

Added: radeon.dpm=1 to /etc/default/grub -removed, not needed in Ubuntu 14.04, enabled by default

Installed: laptop-mode-tools (but apparently these are already built in to Ubuntu?)

For USB mouse going to sleep on battery issue: /etc/laptop-mode/conf.d/usb-autosuspend.conf CONTROL_USB_AUTOSUSPEND=0

For apt-get install hanging on connecting, or Ubuntu software center hagning on installing app /etc/gai.conf Uncomment line 54: precedence ::ffff:0:0/96 100

The only thing that changed is, my laptop starts out quiet and cool (whereas before it would start up with the fan running high and quickly blowing heat), but once I start running any program such as a web browser, my laptop gets progressively hotter and the battery doesn't last long (may 1.5 hrs if I'm lucky, used to be 3+ hrs on Windows), and Windows didn't run this hot. Even if I close the programs and restart, my laptop doesn't calm down and runs slow. It takes a complete shutdown to reset it to the cool state, but quickly escalates from there.

I've read numerous posts about this and tried different things. I've installed/re-installed various flavors of linux several times. I really like linux, I like the idea of it, I'm just having a hard time getting it to run well on my laptop. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Uh... lllllllllllllllllllllet's go!

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First of all, this is a common problem with the 'free upgrade' to Windows 10. It's near impossible to get it back to Windows 7/8, and in those cases where you can do so, it is only for a time until Microsoft demands you upgrade to 10 again.

One way to cool down the machine would be to use CPU throttling to bring the CPU speed into spec instead of running on default which tries to maximize performance with the On Demand governor. Using Powersave instead would help in that regard with a negligible effect on performance (as seen on my own laptop with XUbuntu).

Another way to cool it down would be to take it apart and clean the components with compressed air and a horsehair brush to get all the dust bunnies out. Bad air flow is one way to get a hot computer, be it a laptop or a tower PC.

A third way to help the laptop stay cool is to buy a chiller mat with a fan built into it (powered off a USB connection). This forces cool air against the underside of the laptop and helps it stay cool.

As for the battery issue, this is probably a simple case of the battery aging, losing capacity. The simplest fix would be buying a new battery for your laptop.

Aren
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