Skip to Content
SUSE Linux
book

SUSE Linux

by Chris Brown PhD
July 2006
Beginner
445 pages
13h 50m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from SUSE Linux

Chapter 4. Using Linux on Your Laptop

Laptops present special challenges, not only for Linux but for all operating systems. They often have special low-power versions of standard chipsets that have in the past presented a major obstacle to getting Linux installed and running properly. Nowadays, laptops are mainstream and hardware support in Linux is excellent. Nonetheless, there remain a few challenges, which I discuss in this short chapter—configuring power management to conserve battery life, using wireless and Bluetooth connectivity, and synchronizing the files on your laptop with those on your desktop system.

Configure Laptop Power Management

The term power management refers to a group of techniques that (for the most part) are designed to reduce the power consumption of a PC (particularly a laptop running on battery power). These techniques include suspend-to-disk, suspend-to-RAM, processor frequency scaling (reducing the processor clock speed), spinning down the hard disk, and thermal management (starting the fans).

Linux support for power management on laptops lagged behind Microsoft Windows support for many years. It has come a long way in the last few years; however, it is still considered experimental in the current kernel. Before playing with any of the settings here, make sure that everything is backed up.

How Do I Do That?

In theory, three suspend modes are supported:

Suspend-to-disk

Saves the actual state of the machine to disk and powers it down entirely. When the machine ...

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.

Read now

Unlock full access

More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly

AirBnbBlueOriginElectronic ArtsHomeDepotNasdaqRakutenTata Consultancy Services

QuotationMarkO’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.
Julian F.
Head of Cybersecurity
QuotationMarkI wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.
Addison B.
Field Engineer
QuotationMarkI’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.
Amir M.
Data Platform Tech Lead
QuotationMarkI'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Mark W.
Embedded Software Engineer

You might also like

openSUSE Linux Unleashed

openSUSE Linux Unleashed

Michael McCallister
SUSE™ Linux 10 Unleashed

SUSE™ Linux 10 Unleashed

Michael McCallister
CentOS Quick Start Guide

CentOS Quick Start Guide

Shiwang Kalkhanda

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 059610183XErrata Page