Recommended replacement for Fuduntu (a discontinued Linux distro)

Question

I have a laptop which gets very hot. And as we know, heat is bad for the Lithium battery. So I wanted to install a distro which was lightweight and kept my laptop cool.

I came to know about this distro called Fuduntu, which is brilliant and optimized for laptop battery life. It was exactly what I needed. I used it for a month, and suddenly saw one day that the project has ended. I've no other option but to go for another distro now.

What I've tried: All of these distros that I've tried, heat up my laptop a lot and give me poor battery life - Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu. Yes, Lubuntu was unexpected - but my laptop stays above 60 degrees celcius in it. Fuduntu was a lot cooler. Maybe just because these are variants of Ubuntu itself?

How about Fedora? I've never tried it or any of its variants.. What would you recommend?

Btw, I'm not looking for physical laptop cooling advice.. quite experienced in that already!

Answer 1

Fuduntu was very well optimized for battery life. Forgive those that think a distribution doesn't or can't make a difference because they just don't know better and are speaking with a lack of knowledge of the subject. Unfortunately, this bad information spread pretty fast too so most people seem to be ignorant about battery life optimizations.

At Fuduntu we optimized the init process and moved a lot of things to tmpfs (before Fedora or anyone else did that) and we optimized the system to reduce IOs so your hard drive wouldn't be used as often allowing it to stay in a low power state longer. We also optimized the kernel for battery life, because contrary to what anyone will tell you it does not that itself. The hooks are there but without Jupiter, ktune, tlp, or laptop-mode-tools those hooks will go unused.

For a replacement distribution, you should consider openSUSE, SolusOS, or Mint.

Answer 2

Actually, I would advice Debian with LXDE or XFCE at will. Fedora comes with SElinux and many system services preinstalled, which are things you do not actually need (unless you know what I'm talking about) and Mint, from my point of view, is not well engineered.

If you feel adventurous, try Archlinux, which made of "lightweight" its own hallmark, but be prepared to a manual installation and configuration (nothing impossible, but a leap forward for people used to three-click install).

Actually, distribution don't influence the temperature of your notebook so much. What made Fuduntu (which was Fedora 9 + some extra) special was that it came with Jupiter applet preinstalled for doing some power-related tweakings. Anyway, modern Linux kernels (>= 3.2) handle well Asus Hybrid Engine (which used to be a reason for installing Jupiter in the past) and other similar power saving technologies, so power consumption is usually lower than it used to be in the past.

If your laptop keeps overheating, you should try to clean it and vacuum remove dust from fans. Also consider that the life of computer batteries is short and their autonomy degradates over time.

Answer 3

I've never used fuduntu but I would look to the comments on their EOL Announcement, Some people are suggesting Linux Mint with MATE. Or look into Arch Linux.

Answer 4

I would have suggested Lubuntu, but I see that you have already ruled it out.

I suggest you to have a look at Distrowatch, especially in the "old computers" category, these distros should be light on your system resources. You can try some of them and see if there is something that suits your needs.

However, if you are looking to lower the heat, you should check if the air vents are clean and free of dust (it could greatly reduce the air circulation needed for a proper cooling); and, instead of placing the laptop directly over your desk (or another flat surface), you should also use some kind of stand; by simply raising it, and consequently having a free space below, you can sensibly improve the air intake and the cooling; there are a lot of models, from the very basic to the ones with fans incorporated (usually they get power from an USB port)