I'm looking to save battery life on my laptop while reading a book during power outages. My laptop typically lasts about two hours on battery. I've been using Okular for reading EPUB files, but I feel like it's not the most efficient tool for the job. I also use the i3 window manager, which I'm starting to think isn't as effective for energy savings as I'd hoped.
I can switch to a power-saving mode and use a command-line interface (TTY) to minimize resource usage, but I'm unsure if this is the best route, especially considering that reading a graphical format like EPUB might not work well in pure text.
Is my assumption correct that I could find a command-line EPUB reader to maximize my power conservation? Also, does TTY truly eliminate background resource use, or could there be hidden processes, like running WiFi that drains battery? Lastly, I've noticed my laptop can get hot and loud even in TTY due to fan activity; should I be concerned about that?
2 Answers
You might want to try using `auto-cpufreq` to control your CPU performance, which can help reduce energy consumption while reading. While it's true that the energy drawn is relatively constant, letting your CPU run at a lower frequency when you're just reading might still save some battery life. Less load generally means the fans won't kick in as hard either, which is a bonus!
Going the TTY route is definitely a smart move! You should disable any unnecessary services, like your graphical user interface, to keep resource usage down. You can also tweak your screen brightness directly through the system files if you're in TTY, which could help too. For reading EPUBs, you might be thinking of using `w3m`, a command-line web browser, for that. EPUB files are just zipped HTML and CSS, so you can unzip them and read the content in `w3m`, which should work out pretty well!
Thanks for the tip! I'll definitely give w3m a try and unzip the EPUBs before reading.
Wish I had known about `w3m` earlier – can’t wait to see how it handles the links in the EPUB!
I appreciate that suggestion! I'll set up `auto-cpufreq` to help manage my CPU usage while I read.