Lightening the desktop

[Juan53]

Ladies and gentlemen

I'm considering to install Kubuntu as my personal desktop in my laptop. But I know this distro is not as lightweight as others. So I would like to know ways to decrease the battery consumption.
I know what programs I would like to use Libreoffice, Mozilla, Mailclient, Media player. Any suggestions about programs (not really "esential")?
Is there a graphical set-up what allows to save battery?

Thanks for your time.

[woodsmoke]

Hi!

Thanks for considering Kubuntu. I run Kubu full bore on two laptops, an older Sony Vaio and an even older Toshiba Satellite,

I don't know if our thoughts on what is "good battery life" are in congruency, but I get quite a few hours from my batteries.

Power management used to be all about how many apps there were, but now it is about whether the apps are running, more or less, There is not a "lot" that can be removed from Kubu in terms of the plasma desktop which is where a lot of power is used.

I use Libre Office AND Calligra , the whole KDE thing comes with a PIM and one can remove "parts of it" but then the whole point of it goes away, one will still have the "related parts" even if one only uses the e-mail client and not say...contacts, which, again, are part of the parcel.

Amaork and Clementine are the Goto media apps, so choice is yours, I have both on my laptops.

If you have a newer laptop things should really do well on it if it is not an obscure manufacturer.

Here is the path to the settings for power consumption if you install;

System Settings -> Advanced -> Power Management.

Energy saving - screen brightness, dim screen, screen energy saving ( switch off after a certain time, button events hanling when lid is closed or power button pressed

Activity settings - Kubuntu and KDE use "activities" in addition to "virtual desktops" which is the strength of KDE type distros, and the plasma desktop uses "more power" than say the older gnome desktop, (although the new gnome desktop with overlay uses "more power" also:

Don't use special settings
Act like
Define a special behaviour
Use seperate settings (advanced users only)

Advanced Settings

Lock screen on resume
never prevent an action on lid close
Configure notifications.

So there you have it in terms of what can actively be done as preemptive stuff.

Easiest way is to burn a live DVD and try it out.

If you have other questions, please post and someone with more information will drop by soon.

woodsmoke

[woodsmoke]

Actually, I'd like to add something to my previous post, please read it first if you have not so done.

I.............am just ............... can't determine the proper word....it isn't "getting tired", and it is not "irritated", don't know what it is exactly.

But.............REVIEWERS................ who generally do not actually PRODUCE a distro, or actually USE the distro which they review, are wont to use "reviewer speak".

The word "heavy" really WAS a useful term, a decade or more ago.

It indicated "the size" of the distro.

That is all well and good, by and large DSL runs blazingly fast, but....guess what....it does not have a PIM.

I really am.......again, can't come up with the term..........

"something" about the use of the term..."heavy".

"KDE may be large" but I don't think that the term "heavy" reflects TODAY what is going on with modern, well developed, distros.

KDE is extremely EFFICIENT..... in terms of it's memory useage, battery useage, etc.

The developers are well aware of the need for more efficiency, being "green" all of that....even in the face of the fact that the laptops are SO high powered today compared to even a few years ago that......they could "rest on their laurels" and just throw code at the distro and "fare the well".

So....yes, KDE / Kubuntu is a "large" distro, but it is not necessarily "bad" in terms of efficiency, in terms of battery life, etc.

So please take this not as "a rant" but I'm just trying to explain that, given the way that other major subdivisions of Linux are going, KDE is not that much "heavier" than say a large GNOME distribution.

You didn't say what kind of laptop you have, so I can't speak to it, but, again, you should probably d/l the DVD and try it out.

woodsmoke

[TWPonKubuntu]

Ladies and gentlemen
I'm considering to install Kubuntu as my personal desktop in my laptop.
...

I'm running on a Dell laptop, Latitude D820, dual processor 4GB RAM. I run both 14.04 and 16.04 (separate, exchangeable hard drives). I have 14.04 on a 250GB drive and 16.04 on an 80GB drive. Both work well and my battery life remains as good as can be expected from batteries that are at least three years old. RAM size is more important than Hard Drive size. More is better.

I have two partitions, Root and home (/ and /home), plus a 2GB swap partition. I only commit about 20GB to root and leave the remainder for everything else. I still have about 8GB free space in root and over 160GB free in home. This is more thank enough for my future needs and I can, and do backup critical files to USB.

Re battery life, be aware that most Lithium batteries (even the newer ones) will lose capacity at a rate of about 20% per year...
That means their run time decreases as they age.

I have, as you should too, configured the system to reduce the number of "bells and whistles" or "eye candy" which are used to display information on the screen. I use power management when on battery power (mostly reduces the screen brightness to 50% when on battery). Look in Settings->System Settings->Power Management for this configuration utility

I DO NOT run background processes, other than those built into the OS. That said, I regularly have from two to six programs running in my task bar (Thunderbird, Firefox, Dolphin, Kate, Konsole). I also have the KPatience card games when I have to wait for a long download or update to run.

I DO NOT run long (large) downloads or updates on battery power, since you never know just how long you may need power in these instances. Planning ahead for these lengthy tasks just makes sense. You must decide, based on your connection speed. Your Mileage May Vary. I'm writing this on a wireless connection that is giving us (THREE of us) a 15-20KB/sec (Yes Kilobit/sec) download speed (Yes, it it truly awesome that three of us can work at these blistering (Sarcasm) speeds.) But it works.

I too use Libreoffice, and various media players (NOT Media Player brand, but others) These are not used frequently but they are part of my tool chest.

All that being said, a laptop, running Kubuntu is PERFECTLY FINE for all of the above. I recommend a laptop over a Desktop, but only for the portability issue.

[Juan53]

Thanks for both explanations. Truely, the reason why asked for lightening the OS is the autonomy. The performance in my case is not an issue. When I started in the intesting world of Linux/Unix I purchased a Dell Latitude 5450 (I didn't and I don't want any surprises about hardware), and that's what I'm using now.

After studiying Windows from a security perspective, I decided not to trust anylonger in Windows. So, this is the reason why this laptop is so important for me. It carries all my work and studies. I need an OS capable to face at least 8 ours of work. I'm satisfied with Ubuntu 14.04, but sincerelly, its desktop (Unity 7) seems to me a little unflexible (and it affects over my productivity) and old-fashioned. My experience tells me I'm much more productive in Windows-like environments, than in Unity, and as student and office-worker I know that each second matters.

Woodsmoke, you are right, internet is filled with follies. That's the reason why I came here is to get the most acurate persective about Kubuntu and knowing how it can be fited to my needs. I always preffer consulting the original sources to prevent me from misunderstanding.

Definitely, your outlook have encouraged me more to install Kubuntu. I have thought about installing Kubuntu 16.04 and adding TLP as a energy manager to aboid heating and incease its battery life.

Thanks for your advise and time. I can apreciate your effort in your answer.

[TWPonKubuntu]

...
Definitely, your outlook have encouraged me more to install Kubuntu. I have thought about installing Kubuntu 16.04 and adding TLP as a energy manager to aboid heating and incease its battery life.
...

Just be cautious of 16.04, it is "rough around the edges" and you may run into some of the unpolished parts.

I run 14.04 as my production machine and am only testing 16.04 on a separate drive. FYI

Do read some of the other threads on the 16.04 experience to get a handle on how it might fit your situation.

I don't plan on moving my production work to 16.04 for at least a year.

And I still run my laptop 99% on wall power.

[elijathegold]

In 16.04 you can get a significant battery life boost by simply running

sudo apt install tlp
sudo tlp start

For earlier releases run

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linrunner/tlp
            sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install tlp
sudo tlp start

tlp manages the power brilliantly, without any tweaking, it will reduce power drain on one of my laptops from about ~18w idling to ~10w. For more information have a look at https://linrunner.de/en/tlp/docs/tlp...anagement.html