My Linux Experience To Date - Need help with some minor things

[Nexxsys]

Short History; I have dabbled in various linux distros, but have gravitated and most often played around with the Debian/Ubuntu variants. I took the dive on my development machine (Q6600, 8 GB Ram, 7870 2GB video card, Samsung EVO 250 SSD) with Ubuntu Gnome 14.04 (upgraded to 15.04 last week) and now replaced my mechanical hard drive on my laptop (Dell LX501 - core i5, 8GB Ram, 120 Crucial SSD) running Ubuntu Mate 15.04.

So far things are stellar running great. In fact the laptop experience has been what I always expected from my laptop but never got with Windows 7.

Issues:

1. CUPS (Printing) to my Brother 7840W MFP Printer is working, but extremely slow. How do I speed this up? i.e. 10 minutes until a Libre Writer file prints (without graphics)
2. The Mouse Trackpad on the laptop is extremely touchy (too sensitive)
3. The battery life is all over the map. 2 hours and 54 minutes (but only last 1 hour and 12 minutes) and after full recharge gives 100 hours of battery life ... jackpot (well not really). Not sure what I can do here.
4. Selecting Text in Libre writer is touchy and almost too precise it seems so I end up going to Office online instead

Issue 1 & 4 is the same with almost all distro's I have tried (even Manjaro and OpenSuse) regardless of laptop or desktop.

Anyhow, thought I would tell a bit of a success story on switching 2 machines from Windows 7/10 to Linux. I am 90% statisfied, just like to tweak a few issues and I should be good.

Thanks

[Nexxsys]

Thanks @sinphild I will give your suggestions a try. Initial glance the WPS Office looks pretty sweet.

[Nexxsys]

Well the latest Brother drivers worked awesome. Faster than windows...

[swick]

The Mouse Trackpad on the laptop is extremely touchy (too sensitive)

locate 50-synaptics.conf
create 50-mytouchpad.conf in the same folder (possibly /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/)

Section "InputClass"
        Identifier      "touchpad catchall"
        Driver          "synaptics"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option          "FingerLow" "10"
        Option          "FingerHigh" "10"
EndSection

Change FingerLow and FingerHigh options until you're okay with it (change requires X restart).

The battery life is all over the map. 2 hours and 54 minutes (but only last 1 hour and 12 minutes) and after full recharge gives 100 hours of battery life ... jackpot (well not really). Not sure what I can do here.

This is kinda hard. Try using powertop or gnome-battery-bench to figure out where the power is going, then could try to use some kernel power saving options (might want to use TLP).

Selecting Text in Libre writer is touchy and almost too precise it seems so I end up going to Office online instead

Not sure what you mean.

[Scorpy]

Most of the time battery life won't be as good in Linux as Windows due to it being reliant on proprietary power management drivers. Your best bet is to calibrate the battery by simply doing 2 full power cycles. From 100%, use the laptop constantly until 0% and let the laptop completely power off. Use the laptop constantly from 0% back up to 100%, then unplug and constantly use it until 0% again, then leave it on while charging to 100% (but don't use it this time). Repeat every 2nd month.

Interesting, whats the point of the second deep-discharge? Here are some good guidelines from TechRepublic:

Unlike NiCad batteries, lithium-ion batteries do not have a charge memory. That means deep-discharge cycles are not required. In fact, it's better for the battery to use partial-discharge cycles.

There is one exception. Battery experts suggest that after 30 charges, you should allow lithium-ion batteries to almost completely discharge. Continuous partial discharges create a condition called digital memory, decreasing the accuracy of the device's power gauge. So let the battery discharge to the cut-off point and then recharge. The power gauge will be recalibrated.

Source: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-tips-for-extending-lithium-ion-battery-life/

Also, try to stay at or below room temperature since higher temps in combination with a higher charge can also cause damage to your battery.

[Nexxsys]

I went with Antegros (Archlinux distro) and I am having a much better experience on my laptop with linux.

Thanks

[Eden]

There are lots of power management options on linux. Have a look at the arch wiki at least on that. The only downside is they are not easy to use and a bit of a manual process just now.

[Nexxsys]

Thanks for everyone's help.

I switched the Laptop over to Antegros but finally landed on Ubuntu Gnome 15.04. Wow, it has been great and working much better than initial experiences.

But what has WOW'd me is my recent purchase. I upgraded my development/linux box from the Q6600 to an AM3+ FX-6300 with 16 GB of RAM., and it running like a dream. What blew me away was I didn't need to reinstall Ubuntu Gnome 15.04 I simply booted up the new system and it loaded into Ubuntu flawlessly. I then ran a few games to try it out and it is running very stable. I even enabled IOMMU in the bios on the Motherboard and so far so good. Can;t wait to play with virtualization now.

[Zeverin]

I'm using TLP and battery life is just as good as on Windows :)
It's very easy to setup so I'd recommend giving it a try.