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 ...
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