Linux PM on Macbook Pro
I have recently switched back to Linux as my main OS on my Macbook Pro (7,1 series). After half a year of using Mac OS X, I found I couldn’t force it to yield to my workflow and preferences in too many ways. I still think it is a great system, and a great user experience, it’s just that I have grown accustomed to so many little kinks (like sloppy-focus) that I find I cannot use Mac OS X as effectively as my customized Linux desktop.
After customizing my environment (which can be done easily using GUI tools on modern desktop linux distributions), I realized I had to tweak a little to get battery life up to par with what it was under Mac OS X.
Much of these steps are drawn from the Ubuntu Wiki.
First, there’s a PPA with Macbook specific daemons, drivers, tools, so I added that and installed a few things from there:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mactel-support && sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install pommed macfanctld nvidia-bl-dkms xcalib bcm5974-dkms
xserver-xorg-input-synaptics btusb-dkms
This will install:
- keyboard backlight support
- fan control
- screen backlight support
- screen color calibration
- better touchpad support
- bluetooth drivers
After that, a few module tweaks are in order:
Activate coretemp on boot
$ sudo su -c 'echo coretemp >> /etc/modules'Activate proper sound driver variant, with powersaving
$ sudo -s
# echo "options snd-hda-intel model=mbp55 power_save=1" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Then, to get reboot working and have usb devices automatically
suspend, use this to add a few kernel paramters to
/etc/default/grub. Where it reads
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT, add:
usbcore.autosuspend=1 reboot=pci hpet=force
To write those changes to the active grub configuration, run:
$ sudo update-grub
I found that this did not cause all usb devices be set to
auto-suspend, even though they could. So I added a one-liner to
/etc/rc.local which I took from powertop:
for i in /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/power/control; do echo "auto" > "$i"; done
Don’t forget to make /etc/rc.local executable with
chmod +x /etc/rc.local.
Finally, after installing the proprietary NVidia drivers, you can add
the following options to the Device section in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option "Coolbits" "1"
Option "OnDemandVBlankInterrupts" "True"
Option "RegistryDwords" "PowerMizerEnable=0x1; PerfLevelSrc=0x2233; PowerMizerDefault=0x3"
This will activate the frequency override capabilities, enable VBlank interrupts to only fire on demand and set the performance on battery to the fixed-minimum, so that Compiz doesn’t trigger the NVidia performance scaling.
After a reboot with these tweaks, I’m getting between 7.5 and 9.5 Watts usage, which is a little higher than on Mac OS X, but still good enough for around 6h of battery under conservative use (on Wifi, twittering, emailing and surfing).