[LinuxUsers] battery life suckiness on Linux

[Roger E. Rustad, Jr]

I recently bought an HP DV2-1030us laptop, and as you might guess, the 
first thing I did was blow Vista and put on Ubuntu. Upgrading from 8.10 
to 9.04 gave me lots bugs (e.g. speakers stop working), so I ultimately 
brought it back down to 8.10.

Much to my chagrin, the battery life now blows major chunks.  (I posted 
a few questions on the Ubuntu forums, so I'm sure I'll eventually kludge 
something that's manageable.)

My question to the list is the larger question of, why does Linux "suck" 
at battery management?  And what have you done to alleviate the 
suckiness on various platforms?

Googling I see tons of opinions on various distros, but I can't find 
anything that explains the overall suckage.  (Up to this point, I've 
used Linux on desktops mostly and haven't had to really deal with this)