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Re: Laptop battery life with 64 bit

Dne, 20. 12. 2012 04:24:36 je Daniel Dalton napisal(a):

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 12:45:25PM -0700, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Daniel Dalton wrote:
> > But should the knew kernel really improve battery life by apparently 
> > 5-6 hours (according to powertop)
>
> Five to six hours of improvement would be a very large amount.
> Probably more than is reasonable.  But smaller amounts would not be
> unusual.

Ok, so I updated the kernel to 3.6.
I then tried to install the wl driver i.e.
http://wiki.debian.org/wl

I could not install for linux 3.6.
I checked what ubuntu is using and it appears they use the module brcmsmac 
http://wiki.debian.org/brcm80211
Now it seems I am getting very similar battery life estimates from powertop of around 13 hours. Which is what I got with ubuntu. 

So it seems the kernel update helped a bit.
Is it possible that the brcmsmac driver is much better with battery life? Perhaps the wl driver does not allow me to turn off the wifi, with rfkill (can't remember).
What are the differences between brcmsmac and wl? Is wl an open source alternative to something that requires close source firmware? 
If so is it likely that wl is still inferia to brcmsmac?
wl is Broadcom's own closed-source driver. If you can make your wireless card work with the free bc43/brcmsmac driver, I would definitely go with it, as it won't taint your kernel. Generally speaking, free drivers integrate better with your hardware (improving stability), but usually aren't as optimized as proprietary drivers are -- and vice versa.
Anyway, I've solved my problem it seems, just interesting to know how I got to this solution. :) 

Thanks for everyone that helped me with this.
Cheers,
Dan


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