Power manager on tray

[Quaxo76]

Hello,
I have two PCs both running an up-to-date 8.04. One is a laptop and one is a desktop.
On the laptop I got, by default, a nice power manager applet on the tray; if I hover the mouse over it, it tells me the current CPU frequency; if I right-click on it, I can choose the CPU frequency policy (Dynamic, Performance, Powersave). It works great and I really use it depending on my needs (performance or battery time...)

I would like to have the same thing on my desktop PC. My CPU can scale the frequency of its cores. But I had to install cpufrequtils and cpusysutils, and I didn't get the tray icon, and had to manually set the cpu freq policy; and even then, I cannot choose "performance" so that the CPUs are running at full speed, ready to give the needed power. I would sometimes need this setting because the "ondemand" is a bit conservative - many tasks aren't "power-hungry" enough to switch the cpu to its max frequency, and thus those tasks are executed sluggishly.
For example, if I have to browse some photos, the thumbnail creation doesn't trigger the full speed on the CPU, and is much slower than I would like. The only way to have full-speed would be to disable frequency scaling via konsole, and reboot. Not an option.
So.. how can I set up my desktop so that it behaves like the laptop?

Thanks
Cristian

[dibl]

Re: Power manager on tray

The package you want is Kpowersave. On the desktop you have to run it (Alt-F2 "kpowersave") and then it will put the icon on your taskbar. Once it is running, you can use it the same way that you use it on the laptop.

[Quaxo76]

Re: Power manager on tray

Hi dibl,
Thanks for the reply. But kpowersave is not the same program I have on the laptop. Both the appearance and use are different.
And the main problem is that when I run kpowersave on the desktop, there's no quick way to set the CPU policy: I have to enter the kpowersave configuration screen; and from there, it says that the "CPU frequency policy is not supported" - but I know it is, because I can set it with the Console.

The program on my laptop, I don't know its exact name - there's no "about" menu entry anywhere - but its main window is titled "Power Manager"; but I couldn't find any package named like that.

Cristian