Monster battery life with Linux

[calvol]

Good post Roman. I like playing with Ubuntu, and would like to hear more about Gentoo on the Air. I'm wondering if it will "feel" faster than OSX, although OSX SL is amazingly fast on my 2010 Air. I imagine if programs are compiled to your target CPU, the load times are faster because a lot of context switches are removed. Wonder then when a program is loaded, will it require less RAM?

 

[Roman2K~]

Good post Roman. I like playing with Ubuntu, and would like to hear more about Gentoo on the Air. I'm wondering if it will "feel" faster than OSX, although OSX SL is amazingly fast on my 2010 Air. I imagine if programs are compiled to your target CPU, the load times are faster because a lot of context switches are removed. Wonder then when a program is loaded, will it require less RAM?

Thanks . For now, I'm running a very lightweight window manager, but everything I do is instant. Absolutely zero lag, even while I'm compiling things and watching YouTube videos at the same time. And Chromium on Linux is a dream to use. It feels like Google have been focusing on Linux performance as they're building Chromium OS for their low-cost (allegedly) Atom-based Chromebooks. It feels so light and fast, it's an even smoother experience than on Windows (which feels faster than the OS X version). All on the old Core 2 Duo.

EDIT: Also, Linux resumes from sleep instantly too. (And usable right away, as opposed to Lion which resumes from sleep with a mouse pointer stuck for about 3 seconds.)

 

[///M5]

I would like to give Gentoo a go on my i7 13" MBA. Where is that installation guide?

 

[Roman2K~]

I would like to give Gentoo a go on my i7 13" MBA. Where is that installation guide?

Not there yet, but you can start with this:

• Use "parted" to resize and create partitions
• livedvd-amd64-multilib-11.2.iso: the only live media that I know of that has graphics and wireless drivers
• GRUB: v1.99+; create a 1 MB partition with the "bios_grub" flag; install in BIOS mode (not EFI, otherwise graphics aren't recognized at all); regular ext2 /boot partition
• Synchronize the MBR partition table with the GPT one, using rEFIt (on a USB stick)
• Wi-Fi kernel module: brcmsmac
• (Late 2010 MBA) Proprietary nvidia drivers (instead of nouveau): no framebuffer console drivers, but much better power management

 

[peterisza]

Do you think it would also work an a MacBook Pro 7,1? (Core 2 Duo)

Originally I wanted to use it with gentoo, but it had poor hardware support and power management back then, so I switched to OSX. Do you see any chance I could get decent battery life on linux too with the current kernel?

 

[Roman2K~]

Do you think it would also work an a MacBook Pro 7,1? (Core 2 Duo)

Originally I wanted to use it with gentoo, but it had poor hardware support and power management back then, so I switched to OSX. Do you see any chance I could get decent battery life on linux too with the current kernel?

Ubuntu have a list of the hardware components for the MBP 7,1 on this page of their wiki. Everything's compatible. Whatever works on Ubuntu, works on Gentoo as well obviously.

In my experience, you might get better battery life than under OS X with NVIDIA's proprietary ("blob") drivers, enabling power saving features of various components like GPU and CPU frequency scaling, USB and audio auto-suspend modes. OS X is heavily optimized for saving power. The only way to know for certain whether Linux can be even more power efficient with your particular hardware is to try and compare. This takes time, but what you'll learn in the process will be worth it on its own.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Please do a guide.I switched to Mac in 2007, and love it.
For S and G, I resurrected a single Core AMD Fx Chip with 3 10,000 RPM WD Raptors and 16 GB RAM, and installed UBUNTU 10.6 on it. This old Tower is screaming again. At 58 I went to MAC, and at 63, I am learning UBUNTU Linux.
I love learning anything about all things computer

 

[(marc)]

<snip>

Is your guide still in the makings?