In general, it's not about what distro you install per se, it's about what processes you have running. Your best bet is to start with a more minimal distro lik

In general, it's not about what distro you install per se, it's about what processes you have running. Your best bet is to start with a more minimal distro like Crunchbang or Debian and only install what you need. Then use something like Powertop or whatever the current hotness is, to analyze per-process power usage.