[sclug] Under(re)volting - How does MS do it?

[Roland Turner SCLUG]

On Thu, 2007-03-01 at 09:25 +0000, James Wyper wrote:

> Dunno about Feisty, but Ubuntu Edgy has a known problem with a process
> called apt-index-watcher waking up every 5 seconds or so and using
> significant amounts of CPU.  There are workarounds described in the
> ubuntu forums (e.g. stopping the service).

Oh, I should have thought to mention this before. Pieter, for baseline
battery life tests, you'll essentially need to be in single-user mode
(init 1). Some services and, in particular, lots of Gnome apps[1] use
fast (~50ms cycle) polling loops when "idle" rather than sleeping on an
event notification; this is often enough to keep notebook CPUs at full
speed all of the time, even when doing no useful work.

- Raz

1: It is possible that the same is true for KDE apps, I really don't
know. I am merely more familiar with what goes on in Gnome.