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Do you know what is the other thing that 4.17 also does? Optimizing idle loops so your laptop can run cooler for longer. Phoronix's initial testing seems to su

Do you know what is the other thing that 4.17 also does? Optimizing idle loops so your laptop can run cooler for longer. Phoronix's initial testing seems to suggest a 10-20% less power usage while idle which is a fantastic news for those who own a Linux laptop. Since 4.0 or so Linux has become rock solid for me so I no longer anticipate new kernel releases but this is one of those times I run the cutting edge kernel because it is so cool. If you run a relatively recent version of Ubuntu, you can also test by googling Kernel PPA. It's just three clicks away at most. Ref: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-417-power&num=1 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-41...

typon 9y ago
> 10-20% That's insane. Does this apply to all laptops running Linux?
- jimmies 9y ago
  Seems like so. From Phoronix: "I began the weekend work with trying out a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an Intel Core i7 5600U processor... It's a mature Broadwell platform that has been working well under Linux for years. But not exactly a system I would expect years later to have a significant power boost from."
- progval 9y ago
  > while idle Which never happens on laptops because of the web browser /s
  - ccozan 9y ago
    Firefox Quantum seems to beat Chrome in this area.
  - kitsunesoba 9y ago
    I wonder if the time has come to add user-configurable resource consumption throttles to browsers, eg. settings for max CPU, max FPS (foreground and background) for developer-triggered redraws, etc. On my laptops I’d have it ratcheted all the way down, because not needing to plug in and my lap not being cooked is more important than whatever frills the websites I visit have. And if some site can’t run properly while throttled, well, there’s probably a more lightweight alternative I should be using instead.
    - progval 9y ago
      You can do that with ulimit. But it affects the whole browser, so it is not very granular. Tab-specific and/or domain-specific resource management would be more useful.
      - vorbote 9y ago
        If using Firefox, I'm very happy using "Auto Tab Discard". It does what you want.
amaccuish 9y ago
Cheers for the repo reminder, installing this now, really hoping this will make my air go longer. FYI link to packages: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.17-rc1/ http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.17-rc1/
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
alex_duf 9y ago
I think laptops are only one tiny part of why we should be excited about it. Imagine the carbon footprint difference on a server farm...
- agracey 9y ago
  Hopefully your server farm isn't idling enough to make much of a difference.
  - cesarb 9y ago
    The linked article mentions (on page 3) that, on servers, the gain was seen when not idling: "On this Tyan server, the idle power usage ended up being the same across these three most recent kernel branches. However, the power usage under load was found to have some nice improvements."
  - bjpbakker 9y ago
    Many if not most servers are more idle than not in my experience. I haven’t seen many servers that utilize > 50% CPU on average.
    - philwelch 9y ago
      Also, if you're designing for high availability, you're going to overprovision by definition, otherwise the loss of a server or datacenter is going to cause a cascading failure.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    There's lots of reasons that might happen. Lots of businesses are tied to peaks at specific times of the day or seasonality. And not yet sophisticated enough to build in elasticity. Even AWS has no reasonable automated way to be elastic in a vertical way, like auto changing instance size. Some apps can't scale well horizontally. My database servers, for example, are built for "Easter Sunday Attendence" and underutilized the rest of the time. We do better with things like app and web servers, but there are inefficiencies.
  - 9y ago
dean177 9y ago
This should be in the title! What an improvement!
dguaraglia 9y ago
This sounds amazing and I'm looking forward to testing it. I'm thinking of finally pulling the trigger and getting my first non-Mac laptop in over half a decade. I've been rather impressed with how well Linux behaves on laptops nowadays. This is the cherry on top.
- topspin 9y ago
  Well now is a good time. The next Ubuntu LTS is about to appear; 18.04 will be released on April 26 and is supported until April 2023.
dTal 9y ago
>This does not seem to be shaping up to be a particularly big release, and there seems to be nothing particularly special about it. >10-20% less power usage Is this one of those "not big and professional like GNU" Linus moments?

typon 9y ago

> 10-20% That's insane. Does this apply to all laptops running Linux?

jimmies 9y ago
Seems like so. From Phoronix: "I began the weekend work with trying out a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon with an Intel Core i7 5600U processor... It's a mature Broadwell platform that has been working well under Linux for years. But not exactly a system I would expect years later to have a significant power boost from."
progval 9y ago
> while idle Which never happens on laptops because of the web browser /s
- ccozan 9y ago
  Firefox Quantum seems to beat Chrome in this area.
- kitsunesoba 9y ago
  I wonder if the time has come to add user-configurable resource consumption throttles to browsers, eg. settings for max CPU, max FPS (foreground and background) for developer-triggered redraws, etc. On my laptops I’d have it ratcheted all the way down, because not needing to plug in and my lap not being cooked is more important than whatever frills the websites I visit have. And if some site can’t run properly while throttled, well, there’s probably a more lightweight alternative I should be using instead.
  - progval 9y ago
    You can do that with ulimit. But it affects the whole browser, so it is not very granular. Tab-specific and/or domain-specific resource management would be more useful.
    - vorbote 9y ago
      If using Firefox, I'm very happy using "Auto Tab Discard". It does what you want.

amaccuish 9y ago

Cheers for the repo reminder, installing this now, really hoping this will make my air go longer. FYI link to packages: http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.17-rc1/ http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.17-rc1/

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

alex_duf 9y ago

I think laptops are only one tiny part of why we should be excited about it. Imagine the carbon footprint difference on a server farm...

agracey 9y ago
Hopefully your server farm isn't idling enough to make much of a difference.
- cesarb 9y ago
  The linked article mentions (on page 3) that, on servers, the gain was seen when not idling: "On this Tyan server, the idle power usage ended up being the same across these three most recent kernel branches. However, the power usage under load was found to have some nice improvements."
- bjpbakker 9y ago
  Many if not most servers are more idle than not in my experience. I haven’t seen many servers that utilize > 50% CPU on average.
  - philwelch 9y ago
    Also, if you're designing for high availability, you're going to overprovision by definition, otherwise the loss of a server or datacenter is going to cause a cascading failure.
- tyingq 9y ago
  There's lots of reasons that might happen. Lots of businesses are tied to peaks at specific times of the day or seasonality. And not yet sophisticated enough to build in elasticity. Even AWS has no reasonable automated way to be elastic in a vertical way, like auto changing instance size. Some apps can't scale well horizontally. My database servers, for example, are built for "Easter Sunday Attendence" and underutilized the rest of the time. We do better with things like app and web servers, but there are inefficiencies.
- 9y ago

dean177 9y ago

This should be in the title! What an improvement!

dguaraglia 9y ago

This sounds amazing and I'm looking forward to testing it. I'm thinking of finally pulling the trigger and getting my first non-Mac laptop in over half a decade. I've been rather impressed with how well Linux behaves on laptops nowadays. This is the cherry on top.

topspin 9y ago
Well now is a good time. The next Ubuntu LTS is about to appear; 18.04 will be released on April 26 and is supported until April 2023.

dTal 9y ago

>This does not seem to be shaping up to be a particularly big release, and there seems to be nothing particularly special about it. >10-20% less power usage Is this one of those "not big and professional like GNU" Linus moments?