View the actual frequency and change CPU frequency governor from gnome shell.
There is a bit of work to make it work though.
You need CPU Frequency scaling set up to use it.
Archlinux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CPU_Frequency_Scaling
(if you have a good tutorial for your distro of choice, file a bug, I'll add it to the list)
You also need cpufreq-selector, which is usually in the gnome-applets package.
cpupower is now also supported
Fedora 18: cpupower is available in the kernel-tools package
Ubuntu 12.x: sudo apt-get install cpufrequtils
The best way to test you have these is to type in terminal:
which cpufreq-info
or which cpupower
which cpufreq-selector
and check if they exist.
When the extension sets a governor, it does it one by one, calling cpufreq-selector for every cpu.
The problem here is that it will raise a popup asking for your password for each cpu. Typing the password for 4 CPUs can become quite annoying.
To solve this, I use (in archlinux):
Create and edit the file: /var/lib/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/org.gnome.cpufreqselector.pkla
with:
[org.gnome.cpufreqselector]
Identity=unix-user:USER
Action=org.gnome.cpufreqselector
ResultAny=no
ResultInactive=no
ResultActive=yes
replacing USER with your username.
The package 'desktop-privileges' from aur provides an easier method to set privileges for cpu frequency selector.
The user needs to be in the power group though.
I'm open to any advice to make this easier/better.
https://github.com/Farsx
https://github.com/LeCoyote
https://github.com/victornoel
https://github.com/sonic414