Check you laptop battery and thermal status in Linux

Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) specification provides an open standard for device configuration and power management by the operating system. First released in December 1996, ACPI defines platform-independent interfaces for hardware discovery, configuration, power management and monitoring. The specification is central to Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management (OSPM), a system implementing ACPI, which removes device management responsibilities from legacy firmware interfaces.

The standard was originally developed by Intel, Microsoft and Toshiba, and were later joined by HP, and Phoenix. The latest version is "Revision 5.0", which was published on November 23, 2011.

ACPI aims to consolidate, check and improve upon existing power and configuration standards for hardware devices. It provides a transition from earlier standards to entirely ACPI-compliant hardware, with some ACPI operating systems already removing support for legacy hardware. With the intention of replacing Advanced Power Management, the MultiProcessor Specification and the Plug and Play BIOS Specification, the standard brings power management under the control of the operating system (OSPM), as opposed to the previous BIOS-central system, which relied on platform-specific firmware to determine power management and configuration policy. [Reference: Wikipedia, see this link].

If you are working with any GNU/Linux operating system then you may use the command ‘acpi’ to see the laptop battery status and other acpi information. It displays information about the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) system, based on the /proc/acpi file. Most GNU/Linux systems doesn’t contain this command by default. Install it by using:

sudo apt-get install acpi

Picture-1 Installatiom of 'acpi'

As shown in the picture above, the acpi will be downloaded from Ubuntu website and installed on your system. It nearly takes 70.7 KB after installation. Now you may use the command by its various options, as listed below.

Picture-2 Using 'acpi' and options

 -b, --battery

          Display battery information.

-B, --without-battery

          Do not display battery information.

-t, --thermal

          Display temperature information.

-T, --without-thermal

          Do not display temperature information.

-a, --ac-adapter

          Show whether the AC adapter is connected.

-A, --without-ac-adapter

          Do not show information about the AC adapter.

-V, --everything

          Show all information on every device.

-s, --show-empty

          Display information even on devices that are not available or not installed, such as empty slots for extra batteries.

-S, --hide-empty

       Do not display information on devices that are not operational or not installed.

-c, --Celsius

          Use degrees Celsius as the temperature unit. This is the default unit.

-d, --directory /path

          Use the specified path to ACPI information. The default path is /proc/acpi.

-f, --Fahrenheit

          Use degrees Fahrenheit as the temperature unit.

-h, --help

          Displays help information.

-k, --kelvin

          Use degrees Kelvin as the temperature unit.

-v, --version

          Display version information.

Try this command. It is very interesting and useful too.