Today I've released 2.15.92 which is the last test release before 2.16.0 is released. I'm amazed at the work people have done in the last few weeks to make gnome-power-manager ready for the 2.16.0 release.
Now I've been banned (thanks to the string freeze) making large changes and adding functionality, I've been thinking about functionality to add post 2-16.
I get an email or bugzilla every few weeks asking about CPU frequency scaling, and how to add support into g-p-m. Traditionally the CPU frequency has been changed by system daemons such as cpufreqd (there are a lot more to choose from) which require editing odd files in /etc and are not new-user friendly. Holger Macht has written a addon to control this using HAL, so system and session software can control CPU frequency scaling in an easy, and architecture neutral way.
Maybe this is too much detail for the average user, but the feedback I've been getting is that users are screaming for cpufreq support in g-p-m.
The question is how to expose the options, given that there is are a large number of permutations of governers and working options for any given laptop.
My initial reaction was to hide the “use low power mode” checkbox to do scaling, but some computers scale better than others, and some just dont work in some modes, but do others. So it's got to be exposed in the UI.
So far, all the possible options (assuming you have all the governers installed) are:
#define CPUFREQ_ONDEMAND_TEXT _(“Based on processor load”)
#define CPUFREQ_CONSERVATIVE_TEXT _(“Automatic power saving”)
#define CPUFREQ_POWERSAVE_TEXT _(“Maximum power saving”)
#define CPUFREQ_USERSPACE_TEXT _(“Custom”)
#define CPUFREQ_PERFORMANCE_TEXT _(“Maximum performance”)
#define CPUFREQ_NOTHING_TEXT _(“Do nothing”)
With “Computer processor policy:” as the prefix. New names and descriptions
welcome.
Tell me what you think.