Currently for development purposes I use a Lubuntu VM running inside
Virtualbox of a Windows host. I realized that if I do not have the VM
running, then my battery lasts for about 8 hours with light usage of WiFi.
However with VM running, this drops down to about 3 hours.

I had been thinking of shifting my development work onto Alpine (mostly
Golang development, rather learning) running it as a headless VM in
Virtualbox. However, wondering if there are specific configurations that
allows Alpine go into power conservation mode ?

Of course, I realize that there is also the hypervisor side of the story,
i.e. does the hypervisor have powersaving mechanism, say when the headless
VM is just running in the background with perhaps extremely low CPU usage.

Thanks in anticipation to any inputs or pointers in this regard.

Hi,

On Fri, 6 Aug 2021, Banibrata Dutta wrote:

> Currently for development purposes I use a Lubuntu VM running inside Virtualbox of a Windows host. I realized that if I do not have the VM running, then my battery lasts for about 8 hours with light
> usage of WiFi. However with VM running, this drops down to about 3 hours.
> I had been thinking of shifting my development work onto Alpine (mostly Golang development, rather learning) running it as a headless VM in Virtualbox. However, wondering if there are specific
> configurations that allows Alpine go into power conservation mode ?
> 
> Of course, I realize that there is also the hypervisor side of the story, i.e. does the hypervisor have powersaving mechanism, say when the headless VM is just running in the background with perhaps
> extremely low CPU usage.
> 
> Thanks in anticipation to any inputs or pointers in this regard.

Alpine will make use of whatever powersaving capabilities the hypervisor 
provides, if configured to do so (e.g. using the ondemand or powersave CPU 
governors).

But most hypervisors do not make those capabilities available, especially 
not VirtualBox.

Ariadne

Thank you Ariadne for sharing the insights.

On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 12:53 AM Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Fri, 6 Aug 2021, Banibrata Dutta wrote:
>
> > Currently for development purposes I use a Lubuntu VM running inside
> Virtualbox of a Windows host. I realized that if I do not have the VM
> running, then my battery lasts for about 8 hours with light
> > usage of WiFi. However with VM running, this drops down to about 3 hours.
> > I had been thinking of shifting my development work onto Alpine (mostly
> Golang development, rather learning) running it as a headless VM in
> Virtualbox. However, wondering if there are specific
> > configurations that allows Alpine go into power conservation mode ?
> >
> > Of course, I realize that there is also the hypervisor side of the
> story, i.e. does the hypervisor have powersaving mechanism, say when the
> headless VM is just running in the background with perhaps
> > extremely low CPU usage.
> >
> > Thanks in anticipation to any inputs or pointers in this regard.
>
> Alpine will make use of whatever powersaving capabilities the hypervisor
> provides, if configured to do so (e.g. using the ondemand or powersave CPU
> governors).
>
> But most hypervisors do not make those capabilities available, especially
> not VirtualBox.
>
> Ariadne



-- 
regards,
Banibrata
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving