Better Power Management on Linux Notebooks with TLP

Productivity Sauce

Although your favorite Linux distribution may already include tools for managing power settings, installing TLP on your notebook won't hurt. In fact, it can extend the battery life without any significant tweaking efforts on your part. TLP packages are available for many mainstream Linux distros, including Debian, Ubuntu, openSUSE, and Arch. To install TLP on Debian, open the /etc/apt/sources.list file for editing and add the following repository:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/linrunner/tlp/ubuntu lucid main

Add the PPA's public key:

apt-key adv --keyserver pool.sks-keyservers.net --recv-keys 02D65EFF

Update then the software repositories and install TLP:

apt-get update && apt-get install tlp tlp-rdw

Once you've done that, you can start TLP either by rebooting your machine or running the sudo tlp start command. TLP comes with sensible defaults, so there is no need to get your hands dirty tweaking the tool's settings (although you can do this if you are so inclined). TLP features a handful of useful commands, too. The wifi on | off | toggle and bluetooth on | off | toggle commands can be used to enable, disable, and toggle WiFi and Bluetooth from the command line. The tlp-stat command supports several parameters, including --battery (battery info), --rfkill (status of radio devices), and --temp (processor temperature and fan speed).