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

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 02:06:18PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> 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.

I'm running Compiz with Debian, but it's still not as polished feeling
as Ubuntu.  I'm cool with that, though.

> 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.

The laptop overheated with Vista when it was brand new.  I'm sure dust
is affecting it some now, but it wasn't dusty when we bought it.  Still,
I'll give it a shot.
-- 
john-thomas
------
In times when the government imprisons any unjustly, the true place for
a just man is also the prison.
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)