Arch Linux

BeholdMyGlory

Member

Registered: 2008-08-30

Posts: 93

Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Normally when i boot Arch on my laptop, it runs perfect, but when I boot without the power cable plugged in, it gets really slow. My games lag and compiz is really slow. So. Why is this?
It's probably worth mentioning that I'm pretty new to Arch.

IncredibleLaser

Member

From: Germany, NRW

Registered: 2008-07-16

Posts: 158

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Does this only occur when the cable was not plugged during boot? So plugging it in at runtime doesn't change anything? I think that some notebooks underclock the graphics card when running in battery mode.

moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Could be a power saving feature.

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The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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Onwards

Member

From: Pakistan

Registered: 2007-04-18

Posts: 108

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Change your power-saving policy (cpu-frequency governer) from power-save or dynamic to Performance. There must be some GUI that makes it easy for you.

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Have you considered that your battery may be a complete pile of shit?

elliott

Member

Registered: 2006-03-07

Posts: 296

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Have you considered that your battery may be a complete pile of shit?

A bad battery shouldn't cause it to run slow.

My bet is on some form of powersaving feature.

Cosay

Member

From: United States

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 82

Website

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

I haven't owned a laptop in a long time but I know that some of them have power management features that can be set via the BIOS. BeholdMyGlory, you might want to check there.

BeholdMyGlory

Member

Registered: 2008-08-30

Posts: 93

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Does this only occur when the cable was not plugged during boot? So plugging it in at runtime doesn't change anything? I think that some notebooks underclock the graphics card when running in battery mode.

Exactly. To make it faster again I have to reboot with cable plugged in. But I don't think it has anything to do with the hardware or BIOS itself, since I could run Kubuntu without this problem.

Change your power-saving policy (cpu-frequency governer) from power-save or dynamic to Performance. There must be some GUI that makes it easy for you.

Ok, I'll try that. You wouldn't happen to know the name of a GUI that handles this?

Have you considered that your battery may be a complete pile of shit?

It probably is, but it shouldn't matter anyway.

I haven't owned a laptop in a long time but I know that some of them have power management features that can be set via the BIOS. BeholdMyGlory, you might want to check there.

I don't think that i should have to change anything there, seeing as i could run perfectly on Kubuntu even with no power cable plugged in.

Onwards

Member

From: Pakistan

Registered: 2007-04-18

Posts: 108

Re: Arch slow on laptop when booting with no power cable plugged in

Ok, I'll try that. You wouldn't happen to know the name of a GUI that handles this?

You may want to 've a look at this http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU … cy_Scaling.
On xfce, there is a panel plugin pkg called xfce4-cpufreq-plugin, which would make it much easier.