Wifi and battery problems Ubuntu 15.10

Dear all,
After watching all of the TekLinux videos, i had decided to use my laptop as a linux driver.
Running Ubuntu 15.10 with Gnome3.
I am very satisfied with the change and probably will never go back to the Evil that is Microsoft.

However since i am a Based n00b, as they call it, i have run into some small problems.
My battery performance is terrible, compared to the Evil machine before(microsoft 10 os running laptop).
And my wifi is slower than I had internet in 1995, which we used our telephone line, so slower than a Dialup modem.

I did not want to clutter this first post with a lot of useless information so i will share the specs of the laptop, any other information in order to increase battery life and or increase my wifi speeds, let me know and i will provide.
This because i would not know where to start to find all the information required.

Laptop:Sony Vaio
Model number:SVF15A1M2ES

Broadcom corporation BCM 43142 802.11b/g/n
Wifi adapter is running on the :Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source ( proprietary).

Running:Ubuntu 15.10 with Gnome3
I have updated and upgraded everything till today (18 of march 2016) by using; sudo su, sudo apt-get update & upgrade.

Kind regards,
Gulli

In regards to your battery performance, try installing powertop and have a look see what it says.

You switch tabs in powertop with the tab button and renew with r button. Try looking at the Overview tab and unplug your power chord, it'll tell you what discharge wattage the battery is reporting. Also look at the Turntables tab, it's pretty self explanatory with "Good" and "Bad" statuses.

I recommend a program called TLP to manage your power (the one you've probably got is laptop-mode-tools which you'll need to uninstall). So just installing TLP you'll probably see an improvement and turntables going from bad to good. Also open up the TLP conf file /etc/default/tlp for more customization. For isntance I've set mine to disable bluetooth and WWAN at bootup, and disable wifi if I'm on ethernet (and re-enable when off ethernet), as I found out the wifi card is actually a real power hog.

yeah for broadcom, i would recommend buying a new wifi card instead of trying to fix that broken pile of mess.

Battery wise, linux has worse power management than windows so it will have worse battery. (side note. my laptop on linux can get brighter than windows so you might have it up higher than normal.)

Thank you very much for this usefull information!, i will have a look at TLP. And about PowerTop, i had id running in my last install, but i did not understand how it worked( also did not read into it, my bad ).

Thank you once again.

Gulli

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Hey Dje,

I have indeed ditched the broadcom chip atm, and i am running internet from a usb cisco stick for the moment being, i am no longer on a dial up modem.

Thanks for the tips.

If you got any problems with either TLP or powertop or just need a good suggestion on something, ask away mate!

So since i have installed TLP, i can see improvements straight away, the only thing is... this laptop starts to run really really hot. I checked TLP and it cannot see the fan speed. I think that is the problem why the fan sometimes does not run or ramps up like a maniac. If you have any idea how i could manage to check the fan rpms, i would be gratefull.

Moreover i need to read up a little bit more about powertop and all the hardware that is currently running in the laptop.

Thanks in advance zumps,

Gulli

I haven't figured out why yet, but sometimes my fan speed is present in powertop, other times it's not. Same goes with some other stuff. I remember someone else had a problem with fan speed, but that was not with TLP. It's supposed to be managed by firmware, so nothing the OS has a say in.

Stupid question: Have you cleaned the grills and fan? Some laptops I've cleaned had a whole carpet inside, even though compressed air stopped blowing out dust, there can still be hair, threads and such stuck in there. Best way is to take it apart and do it manually, that way you can also clean the fan blades.

If you have a nvidia card use the powermizer settings. Also look at the power modes in your settings.

Yeah i get your point, and to explain.
I have completely took it apart before i installed Linux, because it was already running pretty hot tbh.
Added new thermal paste and cleaned the grills.

I think it is just the CPU and the thin building style.

I thought the new instal of linux was not using the fan as it should have been, however as you explained it does however ramp up sometimes so it might just all be fine.
And the laptop i bought is just a piece of junk.

Gulli.

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I will take a look at the power modes, since i have installed the TLP it runs much longer on the battery as it used to do.

I have read a bit about the Powermizer settings, however people seem to be complaining that their performance settings are not really great. more over the laptop is rocking a whopping (sarcasme) 750M chip, which is not really doing anything special.

Thanks for your input it was very interesting to read about the powermizer.

Gulli

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