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99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

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Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#41

Post by jcims »

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 used to be the other way around. I worked for a laptop company (Winbook!) in the 90s and Windows 3.x and IIRC even (early) Windows 95 were largely oblivious to power management features. These laptops had no fan and the bottom of the case acted as a heatsink. (We would regularly get calls from customers complaining about damage to their tables/desks).

One thing I noticed almost immediately when running linux is that when I was just farting around learning the OS, the laptop would get stone cold. But when I did something large, like compile a kernel, while the laptop was actually on my lap I could physically feel the heat from the CPU start to leak through the case.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#43

Post by smoldesu »

daneel_w wrote: post #39

Do 10 hours of battery life "while surfing the web with Wi-Fi" really strike anyone as a strong argument these days? I'm a bit uncertain. I got 9 hours of the same out of my 2017 MacBook Air's measly battery when it was new 5 years ago . I know for a fact I don't need 14 CPU cores to get my browsing habits satisified. This laptop is trying to be a "premium business workstation" by packing a CPU that's crazy powerful…

FWIW, 10 hours of battery life with a discrete GPU enabled is fairly unprecedented. Even the 16" Macbooks that shipped with discrete GPUs would struggle to sustain the CPU and GPU for 5 hours of parallel use.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#44

Post by dimensionc132 »

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.

No post body was provided.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#45

Post by orangepurple »

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…

Run powertop as root and go to the analysis tab

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/powertop

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#46

Post by smoldesu »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #35
zelphirkalt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an X200 with a 9 cell battery, bought new a while ago, but I think 4h max is what I get, if I lower brightness and only run Emacs or so. How do you manage to run 10h? Does the X220 somehow use less?

Probably not a new oem battery? The OEM 9 Cell was really good. Also - definitely need to tune it down with powertop, you can suspend most of the stuff like usb only the fly, also using and ssd over hdd. Though, to be fair, this one had an HDD originally and has an "HDAPS" system. It's a built in gyroscope that will park the head of the disk if it notices the laptop is in free fall. how silly and fantastic that is

My x201 got ~6 hours of ontime with a new 6-cell battery, so I can believe a x220 hitting 10 hours on 9-cell.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#47

Post by bipson »

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.

Alienware? I suspect you have a dedicated graphics card?

Or any other "performance"-component for that matter, which typically requires proprietary software counterpart (drivers) to run efficiently. Most vendors only ship decent Windows drivers, and the Linux counterpart (if any) is considered "good enough".

I would not consider this the fault of kernel developers. Often there is basically nothing they can do. You just need to look at what hoops the Nouveau-devs have to jump through - colossal effort, little appreciation from users.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#48

Post by dimensionc132 »

spaniard89277 wrote: post #33
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 seems that we're not getting anything close to the M1. I'll stick to second-hand thinkpads for now, but I'd really like to have a thinkpad with some ARM resembling M1. We had a good shot with frame.work but it seems nobody is going to make other boards nor are keyboards really replaceable with thinkpad-like keyboards, so the swappable parts concept falls very short for now.

No post body was provided.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#49

Post by troyvit »

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!

I see it more as what's possible when you have complete control of the hardware and software stack. I'll never happily enter Apple's walled garden again but I do see the allure. You get a lot when you trade away your freedom with Apple.

Re: 99Wh Battery Linux Laptop

#50

Post by bipson »

GreyStache wrote: post #24
GreyStache wrote: post #11

I'm typing this on my 1 year old Tuxedo InfinityBook (S 14 Gen6, not the Pro). Now I'm definitely spoiled by the Lenovo X1 series, but I'm not happy. The hardware is a rebrand from clevo-computer.com - some minor spare parts can be had from there. The system is VERY prone to overheating, the fan is noisy. They claim the fan noise is "not annoying" which is only true in the short term. I have opened up the bottom shel…

One more nit-pick: the screen is polarised the wrong way. You can't see anything when wearing polarised sunglasses (those are always oriented so they filter out the polarisation of water puddles).

This is the case for several laptops and computer displays I can tell from experience, even those from large brands (looking at you Dell).
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