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standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

1-slitaz 2 did not fix problem of using more power than bigger vista.

http://forum.slitaz.org/viewtopic.php?id=1954

2-slitaz 3 is going to need more ram than bigger xubuntu.

slitaz ram system requirements http://labs.slitaz.org/wiki/distro/Roadmap-3_0

slitaz 1=128mb
slitaz 2=160mb
slitaz 3=256mb

xubuntu 9.04 ram system requirements http://www.xubuntu.org/get
install=128mb
live cd=192mb

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (Yesterday 15:49:30)

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#2 Yesterday 17:00:37

jozee
Contributor

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

slitaz 2 did not fix problem of using more power than bigger vista.

small power management utility is a good idea. I will think more about that. It does not feel good to read this comparison with vista sad when we know that, with some pkgs installation and small tweaks, slitaz is probably the most power efficient OS.

slitaz 3 is going to need more ram than bigger xubuntu.

Yes, the RAM requirement will be 256Mb. But, we do have slitaz-loram flavor that has much lower (unparalleled) RAM requirements. loram does not mean fewer pkgs (or fewer modules). Its just a different way of booting the live CD.

Probably, it may be an idea to discuss if we should include slitaz-loram related pkgs into the main CD. They are very light.

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#3 Yesterday 18:29:11

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

It does not feel good to read this comparison with vista sad when we know that, with some pkgs installation and small tweaks, slitaz is probably the most power efficient OS.

Yes, windows laptops have easy, fine-grained power controls but slitaz has potential to be low-power king.

I know slitaz has low-ram flavors but I thought (maybe wrongly) that whatever the ram that xubuntu needs, standard slitaz should need less, especially so that slitaz does not abandon its founding goals.

Adding a low-ram boot option to the standard iso to reduce complexity of having multiple flavors sounds like a good idea.

It also would be good if the standard slitaz 3 live cd would work with 8mb ram and 250mb swap or even no ram card and 256mb swap (with live cd allowing you first to use a stand-alone gparted utility to make the swap).

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (Yesterday 19:42:30)

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#4 Yesterday 22:27:33

spork
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Actually, most versions of linux on modern laptops get less power than windows:
http://www.osnews.com/thread?230516

Nonetheless, slitaz gets about 1/2 hour less battery time than Xubuntu 9.04.

Here is a tip: If you have an ATI graphics card, try adding "DynamicClocks" "on" in your xorg.conf .

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#5 Today 00:36:27

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Vista beat the linuxes I tried because the latest windows advanced power management allows fine-tuning of on-demand power such as powering down usb ports and setting minimum processor state to 5% even while on ac plug.

http://blogs.msdn.com/richardt/archive/ … uency.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/lmeg/archive/2 … urces.aspx

Unfortunately, slitaz does not even offer brightness setting (a big factor).

http://forum.slitaz.org/viewtopic.php?id=1836

Last edited by slicel (Today 00:43:43)

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#6 Today 02:52:21

spork
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

I'll try to make a power manager for slitaz. Possible settings:
* brightness (if available)
* CPU scaling
* disable cdrom polling

Options that aren't available will be shaded (so it can't be activated by user).
Any suggestions/criticisms/comments would be encouraged.

Last edited by spork (Today 03:46:34)

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#7 Today 04:56:43

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

A good template is the vista advanced power settings with their extensive tree of options, while lesswatts.org provides some linux scripts.

video after 7 min. mark- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxASUSh4n3U

Setting minimum cpu % is more important than maximum but setting both anywhere 1-100% is better.

Another significant power draw is wifi and gigabit.

Suspend/hibernate with password on wakeup is important and I noticed a pm-utils package is available now but do not know how to use it.

I think swappiness might adjust writing to disk.

The one place where I would like more power is sound because slitaz 100% volume is weak compared to volume on dual-boot windows.

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (Today 19:17:40)

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slicel

#8 Today 13:28:23

jozee
Contributor

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Hi Spork,

I'll try to make a power manager for slitaz.

Would you be interested in collaborating? I have already written a script (totally untested) for a lightweight power manager based on lesswatts.org. Script already has many important components for power management but I have not yet written the GTkdialog interface.

I have also started a project: codenamed powerbox on Slitaz labs http://labs.slitaz.org/projects/show/powerbox. You can register on labs (if u haven't done that yet), download the file (power-manage.sh). Test it (I haven't tested it so there may be errors; actually it still needs revision before testing; some pkgs are not in repos yet). But anyways, Revise and Improve it as you feel. Maybe that way we can do it much faster .

Rohit

Last edited by jozee (Today 13:34:25)

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#9 Today 18:30:22

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Ways to improve on vista gui-

Do not have non-advanced box, have only advanced box.

If you want one-click choice of pre-made plans, instead of "restore default" at bottom of advanced box, never modify premades but add radio buttons to top of advanced box (list pre-made and custom plans, below which the locked pre-made settings would be shown but grayed-out or the custom settings shown and editable).

Make advanced box bigger with less scrolling.

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (Today 19:26:22)

spork wrote:

Quoting from the same source (page 2):

You can check to see what speeds your cpu supports with:

Code:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_frequencies

As far as I know, there is no way to change those numbers on linux. As far as Microsoft going out of spec for power savings reasons, are you certain you aren't referring to chip voltage? Each P-state can have a different (non-standard) voltage.

That slitaz file offers only two different mhz corresponding to either 67% or 100% and nothing in between, but vista offers hundreds of choices, 1-100% for both min. and max. That situation was one purpose of the initial thread post and earlier posts http://forum.slitaz.org/viewtopic.php?id=1815 .

Here is an experiment to try: Set the CPU speed to 1% or 2%, and try opening a couple firefox windows. If you have an older computer with slitaz (think 200-400MHz range), open a firefox instance in that too, and see if the start up times are about the same.

The are many other variables like 30x more ram on the newer computer or slitaz's leaner system on a dual-boot. Response time is different from power use. The newer c2d vista laptop uses less power than an old ~200mhz slitaz laptop.

I think people are guessing at how vista does it but it seems clear that windows is beating linux at power and cpu management.

Slitaz could be energy-efficiency and battery-life king if it had better power and cpu management.

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (2009-07-31 02:15:57)

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#22 2009-07-31 13:18:35

jozee
Contributor

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Spork,

By the way, I do have an account in the Labs, but how do I join the project?

I need to add you. What's your real name, spork smile (as on labs list)?

Here is the (incomplete) prototype of the GUI

I have also finished powerbox GUI with checkboxes, textboxes, buttons and tabs. Load your finalized script on labs or somewhere, so that I can merge the GUI too. From there on, we can work on a single script.

I am still off-net at home most of the times. Waiting for the weekend to buy a new router. So, please bear with slow responses.

Rohit

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slicel

#23 2009-08-01 01:49:14

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Trying to match windows cpu voltage adjustment in linux-

In the BIOS I can only set one voltage for the CPU and not one voltage for every CPU frequency (under Windows, I had 0.85V @ 1GHz and 1.1V @ 2.5GHz).

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-953412.html

to lower the cpu voltage. In Windows, this is not a problem; install Rightmark CPU Utility, set it up, and 5 minutes later the max CPU temp on load is lowered by >10 degrees celcius.

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/archive/i … 85427.html

I know there is cpufreq but that won't do. Because it will not let me change the frequency other than 950MHz/1.9GHz nor change the voltage....

The reason I want to change the freq and voltage is for battery life. I can easily double by lowering the voltage and freq to 0.075V and 617MHz in windows.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/periph … ltage.html

http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpupowerd/files/

http://www.tile64.com/?p=20

http://linux.die.net/man/8/cpuspeed

http://aldeby.org/blog/index.php/linux- … lting.html

http://www.linux-phc.org/wiki/doku.php

http://www.linux-phc.org/forum/

Last edited by slicel (2009-08-01 22:18:41)

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#24 2009-08-02 19:54:10

spork
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Whew! Here it is:
power-manager
/etc/power.conf

The script enables on-the-fly settings, AC/battery commands and settings, and interacts with the user.
Copy power-manager to /usr/bin/ , and power.conf to /etc/ .
If you have acpid, let me know how to make it run automatically!
You may have to edit the configuration file to get full functionality, as I've made it
to work on a stock slitaz 2.0 - boot up from CD, download the scripts, and save power!

@jozee

I'll email you my profile and name soon.
I haven't added some of the scripts:
- enable/disable DVI/VGA only works on Thinkpads
- until there is a confirmed report of a working webcam, it doesn't have to be in the power manager, does it smile ?

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#25 2009-08-02 22:56:54

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

What do I do with the power scripts in /etc/init.d/local.sh?

My slitaz 2 cooking package manager did not show cpufrequtils in search.

Sh did not list pm-utils. Does sh hibernate?

I saw a script in jozee's sh about phc vid. Does that sh undervolt? Do I need to run cpuburn?

Are these files the non-gui version?

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (2009-08-03 01:36:14)

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#26 2009-08-03 02:11:47

spork
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

slicel wrote:

My slitaz 2 cooking package manager did not show cpufrequtils in search.

Hmm... it doesn't show up in mine either. I'll fix that in a later update.

Sh did not list pm-utils. Does sh hibernate?

The script? Not yet...

I saw a script in jozee's sh about phc vid. Does that sh undervolt? Do I need to run cpuburn?

His may or may not, but I took it out because it may cause more than safe erratic performance.

Are these files the non-gui version?

Yes, jozee is working on the GUI.

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#27 2009-08-03 02:58:57

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Phctool and cpuburn determine the stable vid.

I am still not sure if I need to delete my laptop and lesswatts scripts from local.sh before trying your sh.

domcox wrote:

If you want full-time support of the power saving features, it's better to remove acpid and add the following lines to /etc/init.d/local.sh:

http://forum.slitaz.org/viewtopic.php?id=963&p=1

Thank you.

Last edited by slicel (2009-08-03 03:38:56)

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#28 2009-08-03 05:56:36

spork
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

slicel wrote:

I am still not sure if I need to delete my laptop and lesswatts scripts from local.sh before trying your sh.

Don't! If they work, keep them there. The script only sets AC power or battery power when a user invokes it with the ac/battery argument. However, it can go into a script so it will run whenever the computer detects if it is offline.

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slicel

#29 2009-08-06 09:57:08

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

I copied to those locations and made sh executable but all these commands give sh not found error-

# battery
# power-manager
# power-manager battery
# power-manager usage
# power-manager -h

Thank you.

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#30 2009-08-06 18:43:12

spork
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

Did you copy it to usr/bin? I accidentally uploaded it as power-manager.sh, so enter this into a terminal (as root)
Code:

cp path/to/power-manager.sh /usr/bin/power-manager

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#31 2009-08-07 14:55:23

Atle
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

This is a nice project that can really make a big change, as Slitaz is optimal for old PCs and in the future, according to the goals as set here, also number one when it comes to saving resources for those that are in lack of such, as third world countries and the development of solar powered Schools and internet Cafes.
MadeInOslo

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#32 Today 03:37:10

slicel
Member

Re: standard slitaz that uses less power and ram than bigger distros

I think the lab files changed. What are the current instructions to try powerbox?

Thank you.

Ps- Spork, yes, I copied to bin before I tried.

Last edited by slicel (Today 03:39:33)

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