There are several must-haves when it comes to kernel features when trying to save power, such as:

  • ACPI
  • APM
  • CPU Frequency Scaling

There are a lot less obvious ones too, including sound codec power saving, and IRQ interrupts. Wouldn't it be nice to have a pre-compiled kernel optimized for power saving in various linux distros, like Debian or RedHat?

Software

  • Powertop

Debug Information

No detailed statistics available; please enable the CONFIG_TIMER_STATS kernel option
This option is located in the Kernel Debugging section of menuconfig
(which is CONFIG_DEBUG_KERNEL=y in the config file)
Note: this is only available in 2.6.21 and later kernels