configure battery power settings in Gnome

Gnome desktop does not allow users to set the values for battery critical state, Power settings will only allow users to set what action is to be taken when the battery is critical. By default it is considered critical when battery backup time is  5 minutes and it will initiate battery critical action when backup time remaining is 2 minutes. This default behavior is questionable because 2 minutes will not be sufficient for all users to find a power source and as most batteries used today are lithium-ion batteries, their life will get significantly reduced by this default behavior when drained so low so often.

Fortunately, this can be changed in configuration editor. systems using older Gnome versions such as Gnome2 desktops had a tool called Gconf-editor to change these configuration settings. Newer Gnome versions such as systems using Gnome3 desktop use a tool called dconf-editor to make changes to these configuration settings.Install this tool by using below command from terminal

sudo apt-get install dconf-editor

After installing open dconf-editor and look for following path in the left pane

/org/gnome/settings-daemon/plugins/power/

In the right pane look for the fields,

time-action

time-critical

time-low

and change the time values for the fields according to your preferences.Note that the time is defined in seconds.

Description for the fields and the type of value it accepts will be available at the bottom pane, when you select the fields.

Alternatively, if you want your system to consider the battery percentage instead of remaining time, uncheck the key

use-time-for-policy

and modify the keys

percentage-action

percentage-critical

percentage-low

to your preference.Now your system should take the values you defined after the next boot or restart your system for the settings to take effect immediately.

Ubuntu releases operating system for mobiles

Ubuntu for mobile project  is announced by Canonical earlier today, delivering the last step in their intention to have one operating system for all range of devices.Canonical the parent company of ubuntu have their OS already available for desktops/laptops, servers, tablets and for TVs.This launch would bring ubuntu for mobile devices covering whole range of platforms.

Last year, Canonical announced ubuntu for android where Ubuntu would coexist with android on smartphones. We are yet to see any android phone manufactureres releasing smartphones with Ubuntu for android.Although I consider that project a not so successful one, I hope this would become a success story for ubuntu. This comes in as a direct competition to Firefox OS and Tizen and to some extent to android because it has the potential to be more powerful and efficient than android.Although android runs on linux kernel its java implementation will never equal the performance of native C code, as evident by the comparing the specs of top level android smartphones with the Apple’s latest iphone(iphone 5), which uses objective C with both having more are less equal performance inspite of its lower specs.Both Firefox OS and Tizen are touted as being the OS for web apps. Ubuntu mobile OS should able to run both web apps and mobile apps along with possibility of running native desktop applications as it is a full blown desktop operating system with mobile interface and will run in desktop mode when docked.Ubuntu did a great job of converging the all platforms and it is one operating system which could really bring what is called as a superphone.