Is there a power manager on Zorin? I don’t get any notification when the battery is low. If I forget to check the battery percentage, I should see my system abruptly shutting down.
try this step:
Setting->Appearance->Zorin Appearance-> Panel-> Battery Percentage
Sorry. I mean I don’t get some kind of warning when the battery is low. Maybe some kind of popup saying “Please charge. The battery is low.”
For gnome (Zorin Core):
For XFCE (Zorin Lite):
XFCE Power Manager Plugin; xfce4-battery-plugin, xfce4-power-manager can be added to the panel.
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Or you could try this gnome-shell extension:
You will need to install ‘gnome-tweaks’ if you haven’t done so already.
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Ok. But how do I enable the notifications on Zorin Core?
The gnome help link you shared shows how to disable the notifications, not on how to enable them.
The link shows the gconf key path to follow. If you open it in dconf-editor, then you can change the setting as needed.
I don’t see gnome-power-manager in the apps path of dconf-editor. What do I do? When I try to install gnome-power-manager using apt-get it says that it’s already installed.
hmmm… I wonder if it is listed under a different name…
Does the link to the gnome-extension that Swarfendor posted help?
The link @swarfendor437 shared is to enable showing battery percentage. And indeed, I see the battery percentage already. All I want is a notification when my battery is low.
Ah, ok. I am sorry- I failed to fully understand.
I am not really sure if this will work, so please post along with your progress... But check if you have this file:
/etc/UPower/UPower.conf
On mine, starting around line 65 there is the following:
PercentageLow=10
PercentageCritical=3
PercentageAction=2
Change the above values to double:
20, 6 and 4 respectively. Then save and exit the file.
In terminal please enter:
sudo systemctl restart upower
Reboot or log out and in and check if you are getting notifications.
(May need to wait until battery gets low...)
Ok. I applied the above solution and will let you know if notifications show up. And another doubt of mine is, how do I calibrate the battery? My battery was a little bit new at the time of installing Zorin. So, how do I calibrate?
The usual method is to run the battery until it dies during use. Then fully charge it up. Some say to do this a couple times in a row.
Ok. So the battery runs out and the laptop shuts off. Now, do I have to charge the laptop while it’s in the off state?
You can charge the battery during use but it will take a bit longer. Ideally to maintain a notebook battery you should:
a. Not charge it above 80%
b. Not let it drop below 30-35%
This increases the life of the battery in terms of number of cycles.
Samsung had a clever utility that prevented you charging above 80% but Samsung notebboks were never brilliant overall - apart from that feature!
In this case, capriciousduck is Calibrating the Battery, so must fully discharge the battery (all the way til it dies) then charge up fully (All the way to 100%) a couple times.
@capriciousduck, I would recommend charging it fully with laptop off just to be on the safe side.
Is it possible to implement this feature on my laptop?
Mine is Lenovo Z50-70 20354 model(i7 CPU)
Ok. And really thanks for the support. I feel relieved knowing that I’ll receive an email(probably with a solution) from you guys for all my queries. Thank you Aravisian and Swarfendor.
If this is a NiCad battery then discharge and recharge is correct, not with a Lithium-Ion battery - experienced this at work. On Ni-Cads they had a memory issue that meant you had to charge and drain 3 times on install - If you do this with a Lithium-Ion battery it kills it - and that’s what happened to me when I purchased for the organisation a Toshiba battery - the supplier told me to run the battery down then charge it up 3 times - the battery died! After the first element had been done!
From what I know of Lithium chemistry, no lower than 20% state of charge (~3.7 volts/cell). The batteries last longer if you keep them minimum at 40% state of charge (~3.8 volts/cell). Also don’t keep them fully charged too long and charging up to 95% state of charge is healthier than 100% (although I do leave my laptop plugged-in, since the life hit from 95% vs 100% isn’t as bad as discharging too low).
https://batteryuniversity.com/index.php/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries