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99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

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Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#181

Post by solardev »

nazgulsenpai wrote: post #151
nextos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not. Keep in mind in Linux, desktop environment means a big framework such as GNOME or KDE that runs on top of X or Wayland, i.e. a graphics server. You can run bare X or Wayland, plus a window manager and cherry-picked daemons, to achieve the same sort of functionality e.g. desktop notifications, network roaming or device automounting. My point is that bare X plus cherry-picked services tends to be much mor…

Not sure why you're being down voted when a lot of us just use X with a window manager instead of a full fat DE.

I feel like I'm watching cult members nodding at each other and wondering "why don't they get it, it's so obvious!" while everyone outside just backs away slooowly...

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#182

Post by solardev »

Matl wrote: post #126
mrguyorama wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not Linux's fault per se It IS linux's fault, in the way that whenever someone new comes into the ecosystem and says "hey this important thing doesn't work well or is broken for me" and get accosted from all directions by crazy people who haven't touched mac or windows in 20 years who insist that what you describe isn't possible, linux is super easy to fix yourself (lol), and that ideas from computing in the 60…

Interesting comment regarding the window manager, I had to use a Mac at work recently and apparently one has to use 3rd party tools to be able to snap windows. Coming from KDE Plasma I found this astonishing.

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous macOS doesn't have this out of the box. Then again this is the same OS that decided to make the maximize button turn into full-screen zoom instead. Cuz who ever needs more than one window at a time? lol

I love my Macbook, but really wish they'd borrow some ideas from Windows and Linux

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#183

Post by noveltyaccount »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #145
gandalfgeek wrote: post #19

Isn't it a searing indictment of the entire Intel laptop chip lineup that a MacBook Air M1 has half the battery capacity (50Wh) while giving easily twice the battery life with as good or better performance -- and with no fans!

AMD has them beat on battery life too, Intel just keeps pushing up TDP to try to get perf back even though their node size is bigger and their fab tech is behind. It looks good on paper to call this a "14-core laptop" too but really it's more like an 8-core with a 6-core co-processor. I like this in general, but $2400 + $100 shipping for an i7-12700H / 32GB DDR5 / 2TB 980 Pro / non-OLED display is a bit high. I'm per…

Wait a couple months longer and you may be able to buy one with a Zen4 chip, on 5nm process (same as M1).

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#184

Post by pxc »

jchw wrote: post #89
eloff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not. I use some extra software to try and improve that, which helps, but it also means the laptop is noticably laggy on battery. But you're right that is likely part of the equation. I don't think it's the whole story though, I see other people complaining of wise than Windows battery life on laptops that do support Linux.

The thing is, there aren't really that many laptops designed to run Linux. Even offerings like these and those from System76 are actually made largely based on designs made to run Windows and adapted later. Sure, this feels like a cop-out and is not really of much aid to anybody, but it's only fair to note. Generally, I do not have dramatically worse battery life on Linux vs Windows, but I also did stop buying laptop…

> Even offerings like these and those from System76 are actually made largely based on designs made to run Windows and adapted later.

System76 does get complete hardware specs from the chipset manufacturer, though, and their cooperation in porting an open-source firmware to the motherboard. They run Coreboot instead of the proprietary OEM UEFIs, and this has let them achieve some nice things in power management (including MacBook-like instant on from sleep and hibernation, for example) on some models.

I'm still excited for the first systems where they get to do the physical design as well, but their firmware work on their rebadged laptops is substantial and relevant to the power efficiency issue.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#185

Post by 1letterunixname »

cooperadymas wrote: post #160
1letterunixname wrote: post #103

So? The T480 has a 24 Wh internal battery and a 72 Wh removable battery. I have 4 of the 72 Wh and an external charger. 55 hours of runtime. What's the big deal?

My X201 has no battery and a charge cord. Infinite runtime. It's easy if you change the parameters.

Your "laptop" in disrepair is a desktop. You can't hot-swap that Linux laptop's batteries.

24 Wh built-in with unlimited hot-swap 72 Wh batteries, pretty much 96 Wh + 72Wh * N.

Got anything constructive to add?

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#186

Post by pxc »

eloff wrote: post #68
jandrese wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably an Optimus setup on the Windows side. It basically powers down the graphics card most of the time and switches to the lighter Intel graphics instead. Linux support for Optimus is poor and usually you end up having to choose either good battery life or good gaming performance.

This is likely it as the AMD CPU has a built-in low power Radeon GPU, and there's a monster Nvidia card for gaming. Do you know how I can check if the discrete card is being used / drawing power?

I'm pretty sure Intel `powertop` can tell you, but if it can't tell you directly you can measure the difference in power consumption depending on whether the dGPU is enabled in the BIOS.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#187

Post by matheusmoreira »

jchw wrote: post #28
slashdev wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also a searing indictment of Linux. I get less than half the battery life on my Alienware AMD laptop under Linux than under Windows. I don't know what Linux is doing wrong here, but it is not energy efficient.

Does that laptop support Linux? If not, I'd expect a key reason is simple; it likely is not using all of the power saving functionality supported by the laptop. This might include things like S0ix, throttling, proper sleep states, etc. There's a lot of factors going in, and I think by and large it is not actually an endemic issue with Linux itself. Consider for example that x86 Chromebooks have no issue fully exploit…

Suppose I want to reverse engineer all of my laptop's power saving features and write drivers for them or whatever it is that Linux needs to work properly. How do I begin? I managed to get as far as dumping ACPI DSDT but I couldn't figure out where to go from there.

I got all the extra USB features working. It should be possible to support everything else too. If I learn this I'll add support for all the laptops I buy in the future too.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#188

Post by fortran77 »

slashdev wrote: post #25
gandalfgeek wrote: post #19

Isn't it a searing indictment of the entire Intel laptop chip lineup that a MacBook Air M1 has half the battery capacity (50Wh) while giving easily twice the battery life with as good or better performance -- and with no fans!

It's also a searing indictment of Linux. I get less than half the battery life on my Alienware AMD laptop under Linux than under Windows. I don't know what Linux is doing wrong here, but it is not energy efficient.

This is why I run Windows on my laptop and use WSL when I need a Linux shell. Linux either doesn't care about or can't properly implement all the power management functions the chipset supports

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#189

Post by matheusmoreira »

eloff wrote: post #68
jandrese wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably an Optimus setup on the Windows side. It basically powers down the graphics card most of the time and switches to the lighter Intel graphics instead. Linux support for Optimus is poor and usually you end up having to choose either good battery life or good gaming performance.

This is likely it as the AMD CPU has a built-in low power Radeon GPU, and there's a monster Nvidia card for gaming. Do you know how I can check if the discrete card is being used / drawing power?

I don't know about AMD but nvidia cards have a management interface that provides useful data like temperatures, load and wattage. AMD should have something similar.

I wrote a script to query that data and output it in a format compatible with i3status. In case you'd like to see how it works:

https://github.com/matheusmoreira/.files/blob/master/~/.loca...

Please share the changes if you figure out an AMD solution. I'm curious.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#190

Post by Mikeb85 »

slashdev wrote: post #25
gandalfgeek wrote: post #19

Isn't it a searing indictment of the entire Intel laptop chip lineup that a MacBook Air M1 has half the battery capacity (50Wh) while giving easily twice the battery life with as good or better performance -- and with no fans!

It's also a searing indictment of Linux. I get less than half the battery life on my Alienware AMD laptop under Linux than under Windows. I don't know what Linux is doing wrong here, but it is not energy efficient.

> I get less than half the battery life on my Alienware AMD laptop under Linux than under Windows

If you're on Gnome use "power saving" performance mode. Proprietary OSes throttle aggressively whereas Linux doesn't on "balanced" mode.

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