Monitoring your Laptop Battery from the Command Line(1)
Introduction
Laptop users learn something very quickly: always keep an eye on how much charge your
battery has. If you don't, you just might run out of juice in the middle of work.
Most window managers -- like KDE, GNOME, and Xfce -- come with good battery monitors. But
if you use a window manager that doesn't, or if you want a little more accuracy, you can turn to
the command line to help.
Using acpi
Just about every Linux distribution supports ACPI (the Advanced Configuration and Power
Interface). It's a fancy name for the way in which a computer manages and configures devices
and its power supply. Of course, Linux includes a command line utility for using ACPI called ...
well, acpi.
Open a terminal and run the command acpi. This command returns how many minutes of power
the battery has left, as well as the percentage of power it has -- for example, 9%. Useful, but
what if you want more information?
If that's the case, then run the command acpi -V. This command displays the same information
as the one above, but with a few extras like whether the AC adapter is plugged in and the
temperature at which your laptop is running. If you're plugged in, running acpi -V also displays
how many minutes are left until the battery is at 100% power.
Looking at IBAM
IBAM is billed as "the Intelligent Battery Monitor". To run it, open a terminal and type the
command ibam. You'll see the number of hours and/or minutes of battery life you have left, and
if you're charging the battery, how much longer it will be before the battery is fully charged.
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