laptop overheating

English Hardware
#1

Hi
I’m new to this forum been using Linux for not a long time and I have a problem with the fan on my Inspiron 6400 dell laptop. The fan seems to not come on very often causing it to heat up but I’m trying to install a utility called i8kfan but cant seem to find it in the repositories. I want this to manually control my fans Ive Google d and it seems to be a problem with dell laptops running Linux . My Temp is running up to between 39 and 52 Celsius on SUSE 11.1 which I’m using, on windows which I did use it was much lower. Is there a Sudo command for installing this.

any help is greatly appreciated as I like Linux a lot and don’t want to move back to the dark side.

thanks

#2

Maybe this will help:

Get your laptop fans working on a Dell Inspiron 1420 - openSUSE Forums

I had this issue with an HP Pavilion, had to install an update package for this, I think, and also a BIOS update.

#3

wow, i also have this problem with my Inspiron 6400 dell laptop. need help.

#4

thanks for the reply Im gonna try that out, using KDE on suse11.1 I think thats consuming more power so im gonny move over to gnome and try it out.

#5

I don’t really believe there is a relevant difference in power consumption due to the Desktop. Even in a single-core laptop (turion 64), on normal use the processor is always throttled down and temperature is bottom-low. Those are easy to monitor in kde 3.5 with the panel applets kpowersave, system monitor and ksensors. power is used most in intensive cpu use, display screen and disk activity.