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

[John-Thomas Richards]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 02:44:58PM -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
> 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.

I use a laptop cooling pad with it.  The single-fan Belkin appears to be
the best cooler on the market as it actually blows air at the laptop so
the laptop's internal fans can suck in air more easily and then blow out
the hot air.  Most other cooling pads suck air away from the laptop and
compete with the laptop's fan(s) for airflow.

Switching to Debian resulted in about a 30° drop in normal operating
temperature.  Blowing out dust in the fan seems to have dropped it
another 20° or so.  The dust makes sense; I'm still amazed at the
temperature difference between Debian and Ubuntu.  Now I'm considering
replacing Ubuntu with Debian on my wife's Aspire One.
-- 
john-thomas
------
There is no man so good, who, were he to submit all his thoughts and
actions to the laws, would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.
Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)