AskUbuntu Q1-full

just about a month ago, i installed Ubuntu on my System.
i noticed that the battery was falling rapidly, even when I'm doing nothing on my laptop, like 'literally', i was just staring at the screen, with no open application, the battery still drops rapidly.
interestingly tough, i wanted to see how fast the battery falls when system is under heavy usage and i noticed that the discharge rate is just as fast as it was when there are no open applications.

let me give a detailed description of my little experiment.... i logged into my system, unplugged it, started a timer on my phone and noted the discharge for 20 mins. now, I'm talking about 20 mins of 'doing nothing' ( i didn't open any applications, not even the terminal ) . the batter fell about 9%. now i again recharged my laptop to 100%, unplugged it, started a timer on my phone and noted the discharge for about 20 mins, but this time, i launched about 20 different resource-intensive, power-hungry applications like chromium, thunderbird, xilinix, codeblocks, multiple instances of VLC media player with different movies playing, multiple instances of dolphin, nautilus, midori, telegram, libre office calc, impress, writer and a few more applications. i didn't just launch them, i made some effort to actually use some of them at the same time( just for the sake of this experiment ). i found that for all the 20 mins, the battery did not fall more than 10%. there was this one time, when the batter status is about 39% ( unplugged ) and it jumped up to 51% just as soon as i plugged it in. but i searched online and surprisingly found nothing informative about it.

doesn't this sound abnormal ?

i tried tlp and powerTop, each separately and configured both for maximum power savings. the situation didn't improve. the batter drain was just as fast as it did before. after this i installed and configured laptop-Mode-tools on Ubuntu. I did notice a degree of power savings but the battery Falls just as fast as it did before. One of the main reasons that I am not satisfied with my Ubuntu is it's poor power efficiency. In my personal experience I have noticed that Windows lasts so much longer when run on battery compared to Ubuntu. don't get me wrong, i really like the kind of flexibility and speed that linux offers. some of you are probably wondering why i'm wasting my time in doing all these kinds of experiments. well.... you see, I'm a student, doing my Computer Science Engineering. i spend a lot of time in the campus ( usually there's no power outlet in places where i work ). right now, i have to always use my laptop in places where there's a good power let( not many places like that, apart from my house ). so, i think u can understand why I'm spending so much time on this. also, i know that this is not a problem with my laptop, because back when i was using windows, i used to get almost 3-4 HOURS of EXTRA battery life, compared to Ubuntu.

I did some research on this and have tried an array of options. Some of them including.... Installation and configuration of applications such as TLP, laptop mode tools, powerTop. So far I have installed these three applications and I have configured then for maximum power saving settings. I even came across a certain OS called 'microWatt' tat claims to be super power efficient. Even that seemed to have not worked. the battery drain rate is the SAME.

The thing is microWatt OS is currently based on Linux kernel version 4.4. So is the current version of Ubuntu that I have installed on my laptop.

I read in a certain forum online that there is a certain application called 'noflushhd'. Apparently this application prevents laptop-Mode-tools from doing its job, But there is no further information so as to how this can be turned around.

i found that information here...
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https://github.com/rickysarraf/laptop-mode-tools/blob/lmt-upstream/Documentation/laptop-mode.txt
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On top of it, my computer is affected by a certain bug that is specific only to the Linux systems that run on bay-trail laptops. It's called 'the c-state bug'. It causes the system to freeze when the processor tries to go into unsupported sleep States. As of now this problem is specific only to bay-trail devices.

here are some links about that. please take a look...
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https://communities.intel.com/thread/60984?start=15&tstart=0
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Well a few days ago the Linux Foundation has released Linux Kernel 4.9. I don't know, maybe they fixed this bug in that kernel. from what I hear kernel 4.7 has a ton of bug fixes.  the Ubuntu version that I have installed on my laptop right now currently uses version kernel 4.4. i don't wanna take chances with that because the last time i upgraded my kernel manually, my laptop didn't even boot properly.

I Also read about the way Linux deals with hardware drivers, Apparently most of the hardware drivers come pre-compiled into the Linux Kernel.
Actually I have a bunch of questions about that...

 - If Linux Kernel contains hardware drivers for almost every hardware device out there, And if a laptop that runs on Linux has only a certain number of hardware devices, Then what about all the redundant hardware drivers that the Linux Kernel has ?
 - Since the laptop does not have these devices, would it not be a waste to actually have the respective, unwanted drivers in the kernel ?
 - Is it not a waste of resources to keep all these drivers in the kernel and to keep it up and running in the system even while we are not using them ?
 - If so then how does Linux deal with this problem ?
 - also, sometimes, my laptop takes about 20-40 minutes to shutdown.... is does that have any link to the c-state bug ?
 - How do i deal with the Rapid Battery Drain Problem ? [MAIN]