[GRLUG] does Debian run cooler than Ubuntu or am I just crazy?

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 2:01 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 01:46:37PM -0400, Ben Rousch wrote:
>> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:30 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
>> > When my laptop died I installed Ubuntu (Karmic then betas of Lucid) onto
>> > my wife's HP dv6700 laptop.  She had all kinds of overheating issues
>> > with Vista.  I expected Linux to run cooler.  It didn't.  When I did an
>> > rsync of my home folder (~70GB) onto a USB hard drive, the laptop
>> > overheated and shut down.  If I watched a flash video for too long it
>> > would overheat, even if I used a cooling pad.  Last week I installed
>> > Debian instead of Ubuntu.  (You know, I've come to appreciate Ubuntu's
>> > polish a bit...)  I noticed the temperature seemed to be a bit lower
>> > than it was under Ubuntu.  About 30° cooler.  I just put in a DVD about
>> > ten minutes ago and began to rip it to an .avi.  The temperature is
>> > running about 135°—without the laptop's fan on full speed!
>> >
>> > Am I missing something?  Could two very closely related Linux distros
>> > really function that differently?  Or is Debian with mencoder hitting
>> > 125% of CPU really cooler than Ubuntu running just GNOME?  This doesn't
>> > seem right.
>> > --
>> > john-thomas
>>
>> Could it be the fancy desktop effects in Ubuntu hitting your GPU more?
>> I don't know what Debian enables by default, but Ubuntu turns on some
>> pretty effects if your video card is good enough.
>
> Ubuntu is clearly more polished than Debian, but could those pretty
> affects have that great a difference?  It overheated during an *rsync*!

Believe it or not, your GPU does a *lot* more work than your CPU does,
at least if you're among the majority of folks who use hardware
acceleration for anything (2D *or* 3D).  Vista introduced dwm, a
compositing window manager much like Compiz.

If your laptop is overheating, you probably ought to get the dust
cleaned out of it; I'd wager you've got a couple heat sinks in there
that would work a lot better if you did.

-- 
:wq