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

[Michael Mol]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 2:39 PM, John-Thomas Richards <jtr at jrichards.org> wrote:
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 02:06:18PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
>>
>> 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.

I suppose you might have a badly seated heat sink. Other possibilities
include a cruddy fan, bad fanspeed controller settings (should be
tunable, either in BIOS or by some daemon), accidental positional
blocking of airflow intake or exhaust, or simply an incredibly badly
designed piece of hardware.

If you disable Compiz entirely, that should also help. With an old
laptop of mine, I found it helpful to add an additional rigid bottom
to it, to guarantee space between its air intake and whatever it was
sitting on.

-- 
:wq