Optimizing laptop battery life with AcpiTool and PowerTOP
Charge!
© Lead Image © 25081972, 123RF.com
AcpiTool and PowerTOP ensure a sustainable battery lifetime and guarantee low energy consumption of laptops running Linux by identifying power hogs and maintaining the battery.
Far from the next power outlet, many users look anxiously at their laptop's battery charge state. Although modern hardware relies on several tricks to save power, whether or not they actually work often depends on your hardware.
One option available to Linux users is managing power through the ACPI kernel modules (see the box titled "The ACPI Dilemma"). Recent machines also let you configure many components on the fly to reduce energy consumption. The small command-line programs AcpiTool and PowerTOP can help you keep track of your power demands and keep your laptop from shutting down when you really need it.
Specifics
AcpiTool resides in the repositories of virtually all the major distributions, and you can install it conveniently from there via the respective package manager. If it is missing from your choice of distribution, you can quite easily build the tool from the source code [2]. After installation, call acpitool in a terminal window. The software works in userspace, so you do not need root privileges (Figure 1). The program parses the contents of the /proc/acpi directory and converts it to a legible format.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.