Powertop 2.0 power management tool available

After a long time in development, version 2.0 of Powertop has now been released. The command line program for Linux systems offers various diagnostic and optimisation features that allow components with a higher-than-needed power consumption to be identified and, ideally, adjusted. The program is available via the 01.org web site, which is run by the Intel Open Source Technology Center; accessing the previous source, lesswatts.org, will now display only a Drupal default page saying that the site is offline.

Version 2 can generate reports that list all essential system characteristics; experienced developers can use this data to point out scope for optimisation. The user interface of version 2.0 is more intuitive and is aimed more strongly at end users, unlike the 1.x versions, which were predominantly designed for developers.

Powertop 2.0

Slideshow, 7 images

The first pre-release version of series 2 became available in late 2010; the last of that series, with version number 1.98, was released a year ago. Since then, the developers have improved many of the details of the application, but haven't introduced any further major changes. Many of the distributions released in the past year have included version 1.98 and The H published a feature article, Powertop 2.0: saving power under Linux which looks in depth at the changes that have appeared in the new version.

(djwm)