[conspire] idle computer

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

> I agree, but in suse it is in the gnome "control panel" - ugg
> although you can turn it off the the kernel level with suseconfig

Again that is merely a graphical front-end to the -real- system control
that is actually implemented via lower-level kernel tools and related
userspace utilities (upower, dbus-send, cpu-freqset, and probably others
I'm forgetting).

Why have so many people, including long-time Linux users, fallen into
the bad habit of giving information specific to particular distros or to
desktop environments and heavy-weight, dependency-ridden graphical tools
in cases when they don't have to?

You can actually manipulate sysfs file /sys/power/state using nothing more
sophisticated than 'echo', if you wish.  See the kernel docs:
http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/power/states.txt
And:  http://mihai.bazon.net/blog/acpi-suspend-resume-your-linux

> What one does on redhat or debian, I have no idea.

Debian does not try to force desktop environments onto people, though
the most commonly used installation disk does default to GNOME.  I have
a Debian workstation system in front of me at the moment that has no
desktop environment, and has the Window Maker window manager.  I've
allowed the kernel's default power management to persist without
tweaking, since it seems to do OK.

Just a couple of minutes' searching finds, also, any number of simple
tools to manage /sys/power/state and similar kernel interfaces, such as:

hibernate
i8kutils (for Dell Inspiron/Latitute)
  http://www.debianhelp.co.uk/debianutilities2.htm

cpufrequitls
  http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/cpufreq/cpufrequtils.html

pmutils
  http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/power-management-guide.xml

laptop-mode-tools
  http://samwel.tk/laptop_mode/