xfmedia: wakeups per second in idle, play time

[Grant McWilliams]

> Well, we'll have to agree to disagree then.  Most of my non-AC-powered
> laptop time is on planes, and given the total flight time, not using my
> laptop for an extra 15 minutes isn't the end of the world.  Obviously,
> opinions and usage patterns differn.


This is how we got into this mess to start with. The mess I'm talking about
is why we have things like KDE that take up 250 Megs of ram just to run.
It's only 15 minutes so why worry about it is the same as saying it's only
going
to take up another 20 Megs of ram so why worry about it?  The next thing we
know we're recommending that you have 1 Gig of ram to run XFCE 5 the new
lightweight
desktop. Same goes for cpu and battery usage. If we can do the same using
less then
why don't we do it? Yes I'm volunteering any time I can while taking into
consideration
my skill level. Whenever I can I work open source hours into my contracts
too so I get

Your feelings are one thing -- hard data as to what's actually causing
> the problem is another.  I've found that simply tweaking power
> management parameters on Linux can give you a good extra 30 minutes.
> Are you using 'laptop-mode'?  If not, give that a try.  Beyond that,
> it's far from certain that it's the applications you're using that are
> reducing your battery life.


It's not subjective, it's the result of spending the last 2 years trying to
get
my laptop to last as long as Windows does out of the box. I've got longrun,
I've tweaked the power management, I've changed the way I mount my
partitions etc..
After each change I've taken new statistics until I'm sick of it. I've now
had
Mandriva, Ubuntu and Suse on the box and finally bought a monster 9 hr
battery
(that lasts 6 under Linux and just a bit over 8 on Windows).


If that actually were the case, I'd agree.  You're not going to get a
> linear increase in battery power by 'fixing' a certain number of
> applications.  The law of diminishing returns probably applies pretty
> well here.


The law of diminishing returns does NOT directly apply to battery power. The
law
of diminishing returns applies to cpu power, hard drive speed etc. but
batteries
are linear. You use what you use. If you use less you're battery will last
that
much longer. Yes, we don't want to go chasing every last interrupt but still
it
seem apparent that there is quite a lot that we can do without going crazy
over
it.

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not saying that looking into these
> issues is a waste of time or that increasing battery life isn't a great
> idea.  I'm just saying making arbitrary decisions as to what to work on
> based on fuzzy data is a poor use of most people's time.


The data might not be as fuzzy as you might think. It's not too hard to
watch
the amount of juice being used during different activities.


Who's this 'we', by the way?  Are you volunteering your time? ^_^


Yes.


        -brian
>
>
Grant
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