| openSUSE-Dokumentation Chapter 1. Getting Started with the GNOME Desktop / 1.15. Controlling Your Desktop’s Power Management | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | 1.14. Opening or Creating Documents with OpenOffice.org | 1.16. Creating, Displaying, and Decompressing Archives |  | |
| openSUSE-Dokumentation Chapter 1. Getting Started with the GNOME Desktop / 1.15. Controlling Your Desktop’s Power Management | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.14. Opening or Creating Documents with OpenOffice.org | 1.16. Creating, Displaying, and Decompressing Archives | | |
GNOME Power Manager is a session daemon for the GNOME desktop that manages the power settings for your laptop or desktop computer.
GNOME Power Manager is usually started automatically when GNOME starts, but you can manually start GNOME Power Manager by using the following command:
gnome-power-manager --verbose --no-daemon
The GNOME Power Manager displays the following notifications under the specified conditions:
You can disable this notification by changing the GConf key
/apps/gnome-power-manager/notify_ac_adapter.
You can disable this notification by changing the GConf key
/apps/gnome-power-manager/notify_fully_charged.
You will receive a repeat notification only if your battery percentage charge drops below 95% and then is again fully charged. This prevents some machines from showing unwanted repeat notifications if the battery is incorrectly reporting the charged status.
When the battery is low, you will receive the following notification. You should consider switching to AC power as soon as possible.
When the computer has run out of power, it will show this notification explaining what action is required. You can change the critical low action using the preferences tool (see Section 1.15.3, “Modifying Power Management Preferences” for more information).
The statistics program lets you view the power consumption of your laptop hardware in graphic form.
To access the statistics graphs, click +++.
You might not see some options or graphs if your computer does not have the required hardware. You might also see other hardware not shown here (for example UPS devices), but these are treated the same way as other devices.
This graph shows the percentage charge available for the composite primary battery. If you have a main laptop battery and an auxiliary battery, only the averaged value will be shown. A legend is not shown with this graph.
This graph shows the power history charge used by the composite primary battery. The line represents the amount of power that is either being used to charge the batteries in the system, or the power being used by the system from the batteries. You should see the line go up when processor intensive tasks are performed, and go down when the system is at idle (or when the screen is dimmed). A legend is shown with this graph when data events have been received.
You will not receive rate data from your computer if it is not charging or discharging, or if the computer is suspended. This is due to hardware limitations where the rate is only sent from the battery management chip, rather than the power management chip on the motherboard.
This graph shows the estimated charge history for the composite primary battery. The line represents the amount of time required until charged, or the amount of time until discharge. This line should go proportionally up when the power decreases and down when the rate increases. A legend is shown with this graph when data events have been received.
The Power Management Preferences dialog box lets you control the LCD brightness when your system is on AC or battery power, the idle time for the screen power-down and suspend action, the actions to perform when the laptop lid is closed, and the notification area icon policy.
To access Power Management Preferences, click +++.
Use the options on the On AC Power dialog box to automatically put your computer to sleep when it has been inactive for a specified amount of time.When your computer is asleep, it is turned on but in a low power mode. It takes less time for a computer to wake up from sleep than it does for the computer to start up after being turned off.
You can also set only the display to sleep. If your computer is in the middle of a task (for example, burning a DVD) that you want to finish while you are away, set only the display to sleep.
Use the options on the On Batter Power dialog box to automatically put your computer to sleep when it has been inactive for a specified amount of time, to specify what happens when you laptop lid closed, and what happens when battery power is critically low.
When your computer is asleep, it is turned on but in a low power mode. It takes less time for a computer to wake up from sleep than it does for the computer to start up after being turned off.
You can also set only the display to sleep. If your computer is in the middle of a task (for example, burning a DVD) that you want to finish while you are away, set only the display to sleep.
Use the options on the General Power Management Preference dialog box to configure miscellaneous options related to GNOME Power Manager’s behavior, such as the actions to perform when the power or suspend buttons are pressed, if an icon is displayed in the Notification area, and if sound is used to notify you in the event on an error.
gnome-screensaver is a session daemon that monitors
user input (if the mouse has or has not been moved, and if the keyboard
has or has not been pressed), then starts a timeout. When the value of
this timeout reaches the value set in Screensaver Preferences (using the
option), then the
login is marked as “session idle.” At this point, GNOME
Power Manager performs the session idle actions, such as enabling
low-power mode, and lowering the laptop panel brightness.
As soon as the session is marked idle, GNOME Power Manager starts it's own system timer. When the timeout set in GNOME Power Manager Preferences is reached, and the CPU load is idle, then the idle action is performed (such as turning off the screen, suspending, or hibernating the computer).
To make this clearer, the sliders in GNOME Power Manager Preferences are set to start at the value of the session-timeout + 1 minute, as GNOME Power Manager Preferences cannot logically trigger before the session is marked as idle. If you adjust the value of the session idle timeout in Screensaver Preferences, the start time of the sliders in GNOME Power Manager Preferences will change accordingly.
For more information, see Section 2.3.4, “Configuring the Screen Saver”.
