Lower power portable Linux

[Mark Komarinski]

It's better now, for the most part.

A few drivers still don't suspend and resume properly, but there are often workarounds like removing them before suspending.  Utilities like powertop can help identify what's causing the CPU or other subsystems to be drawing more power than needed.

Using it, I was able to get my IBM x40 from about 14W to about 10W.

Some of the recommendations  from powertop are 'obvious' like using noatime.  Others include things like lowering the Tx power for the wifi card or disabling bluetooth if it's not in use.

I think the biggest draws are still the backlight on the display.  Reducing that will help your battery life a lot, even if your other hardware doesn't play nice.

-Mark