Zeus web server - 158 CHAPTER 10 PERSONALIZING UBUNTU: GETTING EVERYTHING
158 CHAPTER 10 PERSONALIZING UBUNTU: GETTING EVERYTHING JUST RIGHT To configure this aspect of Ubuntu, select System . Preferences . Screensaver, and click the Advanced tab, as shown in Figure 10-11. In the Display Power Management section, make sure the Power Management box is checked. Set the desired timings in the Standby, Suspend, and Off boxes. Not all monitors support all three features. Consult your monitor s manual to determine which you should configure. If you re unable to find this information, simply set all three to similar values. For example, set Standby to 30 minutes, Suspend to 31, and Off to 32. Figure 10-11. You can configure your monitor to automatically switch itself off after a certain period. Spinning Down the Hard Disk All modern hard disks come with the ability to spin down their motors to save energy. Then, when data is requested, the motors spin up again. There may be a slight delay while this happens, and some people dislike using disk spin-down because of this. However, on a notebook, it can lead to a substantial increase in battery life. On a desktop system, it s worth considering, because over the lifetime of a computer, it can save a lot of electricity (and therefore money!). The spin-down settings are contained in the /etc/hdparm.conf file, which you ll need to edit by hand. Follow these steps to adjust the spin-down settings: 1. Open a GNOME Terminal window (Applications . Accessories . Terminal). 2. Type the following in the terminal window: sudo gedit /etc/hdparm.conf 3. Click Search . Find and, in the box, type spindown_time.