I know it sounds weird but there is a basis to my query.
My wife runs a Toshiba laptop under Windows Vista and I am trying to convince her to switch to openSUSE, promising better response times.
I am certain it would perform better but am afraid that it will run too hot.
We did some tests using a USB bootable version of Precise Puppy and the Toshiba would always shut down due to overheating.
She is not running anything very exotic, almost exclusively Korean videos off of the Internet.
So, can you predict if openSUSE would cause overheating, is it steamier than Windows ?
I guess I could try the LiveCD version and see what happens, though the response times will not be very impressive.
The way you keep from over heating a poorly designed cooling system is to tun the processor at near 100% which most video stuff does. The way to handle it is to slow the processor down. You can set the frequency down in the power controls in yast and set rules. You need to add the yset2-power-managment package since seems it is no longer installed by default.
You might also check the fan and be sure that the machine is not set on a soft surface which might block air flow. Also helps to have a proper video driver which will unload the CPU and put more on the GPU. Probably missing in a default Puppy install.
And any laptop more than six months old that has not had its heat sinks blown out using a can of duster spray is simply over due. You can unplug all power and pull the battery and the then blast away through every vent and its worth getting a couple of cans as it gets cold and slows down. Works well to clean out under the keyboard as well. A combination of an older laptop, slight or worse buildup of dust, a more powerful kernel running your CPU and perhaps not using the same power settings can all result in running hotter.
And what ever you do, do not discount the effect dust build up can have on a Laptop cooling system.
> You might also check the fan and be sure that the machine is not set on
> a soft surface which might block air flow. Also helps to have a proper
> video driver which will unload the CPU and put more on the GPU. Probably
> missing in a default Puppy install.
I heard of some cards running the video fan full speed all the time,
because it could not be controlled. But not of the other way round… :-?
The other thing, using more CPU because of having to do graphics things
in software that the card should do, does indeed heat the machine more.
But also the operating system should slow down the CPU when it overheats.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)
That is some interesting reading Jim, thanks.
I am eager to get my hands on her notebook and give them a try. It looks as if I can monitor the temperatures and fiddle with parameters to see if they have any impact. Excellent !
After the general cleanup, of course.
Is this notebook equipped with an integrated or dedicated GPU?
The discrete GPU heats (much) more than the integrated one and, from this point of view, it would be better to use the proprietary driver …
I ran the notebook from LiveCD 64 and your utility made quite a difference.
Opening temps were 181
Dropping to powersave mode and it reduced the temp to 165. It jumped back to 178 when I was running 2 internet videos at once which she will be unlikely to do.
I still need to blow it out.
If I install openSUSE, can I make the powersave mode permanent ?
The article on YaST settings is perminant, but you would need to use the CFU utility to see what gets selected for sure after a reboot. Because of this, it is hard to know the exact speed governor that has been selected by YaST. The CFU utility can be run at startup to select any setting you want. For instance, it can be run from the after.local script per this blog.
On Sun 18 Aug 2013 06:16:02 PM CDT, hextejas wrote:
PiElle;2579997 Wrote:
> Is this notebook equipped with an integrated or dedicated GPU?
> The discrete GPU heats (much) more than the integrated one and, from
> this point of view, it would be better to use the -proprietary- driver
> …
It’s an ATI mobility Radeon 3100 and it seems that other linux users,
like ubuntu also run hot.
