Linux massively improves battery life on my gaming laptop
Posted by camatthew88@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 77 comments
On my gaming laptop in power saving mode on Windows I struggled to get more than 3 hours of battery, but on Linux I have been able to get about 7-8 hours of battery life (enough for all of my college classes). Prior to installing Linux on my laptop I was worried that my laptop's battery would not last long enough for class but now I know by running Linux, I will have enough battery for class.
MentalUproar@reddit
Windows and Mac usually do much better at optimizing for power consumption than Linux. It’s sort of the weak spot for this particular OS. Your results don’t suggest Linux is better with battery so much as something was wrong with your windows install.
noobmasterdong69@reddit
for me linux is better for battery since i can turn everything to the minimum while still running a browser smoothly with tlp (like 1% cpu idle), but windows has a bunch of extra things that use power that makes it worse for low computation things
maqbeq@reddit
Windows update, telemetry, search indexing and Windows defender running in the background for instance
wowsomuchempty@reddit
Mac are very good for power saving. I run asahi Linux on an M1 and love it, but it can't match apple for that (yet).
acidnik@reddit
Linux used to be way worse than win on laptops (1 hour linux / 3 hours win), but it has changed drastically at some point, I think about 10 years ago or less
Conscious-Advice-825@reddit
It still is atleast in my laptop, youtube in brave only lasts like 1.5ish hrs in arch, same in endeavorOS also, while 3.5-4hrs in windowd
cloggedsink941@reddit
Run mpv 'youtubelink' from the shell instead.
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Out of curiosity does your laptop have dedicated or integrated graphics
Conscious-Advice-825@reddit
Dedicated... Oh shiiit now i understand why has less battery life. 😮💨.
MooseBoys@reddit
If I had to guess, their linux install is only using the iGPU and the dGPU is powered off and unusable. This is possible to accomplish in Windows, but isn’t the default. Generally it’s assumed that if you paid for a laptop with a dGPU, you’ll want to use it, so even when applications aren’t using it, it remains in a low-power state but is still online and available for if you launch a game.
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Somehow I got power usage down to 5.9W with low screen brightness
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
by-path card0 card1 renderD128 renderD129
Undefiend10@reddit
I agree, out of the box linux isn't optimized for battery consumption. I wonder if OP is running some power and cpu optimizing tools to get those hours. In my case, my laptop doesn't even give 2hrs on full charge even tho it's a new machine, I had to install auto-cpufreq and did some other tweaks to improve battery life.
bubblegumpuma@reddit
Honestly, speaking as someone who's been using Linux on and off for a decade, I feel this is one of those things that was much more of a problem in the past and only occurs in much more limited cases nowadays. That kind of bears out if you look at some of the Linux variants that worked their way into being commercially available in the early 2010s - look at Cathode Ray Dude's Quick Start series for a couple of these (along with other interesting, weird things). He's done comparative tests of battery life on these Linux OSes versus Windows Vista/7 (the configuration that was shipped) and the battery life was approximately equal.
I'm saying this on gut feeling rather than any actual evidence, but I feel like if you installed a modern distro on there with a lighter-weight DE, the battery life would be better than both the Windows and early-2010s Linux setups.
MentalUproar@reddit
It’s plausible. Even the heavier distros like gnome and KDE are miles more efficient than they used to be.
BlackFuffey@reddit
Linux is sometimes bad on battery because some drivers optimized for battery are not available, so general drivers had to be used which isn’t good on optimization. However this has greatly changed since 2019 where kernel development were focused on battery efficiency, and now days majority of the hardware have optimized drivers available.
Far_Piano4176@reddit
this is not my experience with a ryzen 6850u HP thin and light. I have it dual booted with fedora and my windows install has almost nothing installed, no additional services. Linux gets better awake battery life web browsing and watching videos, and the difference in s3 suspend is even more significant.
KnowZeroX@reddit
It is not. The only reason why you would have lower battery life under linux is if you have no proper drivers or things like hardware acceleration not properly enabled. As long as linux is working properly, it isn't uncommon to get better battery life
amamoh@reddit
for me it's the opposite, on windows I get 3x battery life than on Kubuntu
Zeti_Zero@reddit
which graphics card are you using?
If you have integraded and dedicated graphics card I have good news!
If you currently don't need dedicated graphics card you can simply turn it of. My suspition is that what mostly kills your battery life is graphics card.
I use "sudo system76-power integrated" and then reboot to completely disable my graphics card and when I need to turn it back on I use "sudo system76-power hybrid" and another reboot and everything is back to normal.
System76-power may be unable to switch your graphics card if you use "discrete graphics" in bios and in that situation you need to change it. Also this setting in bios can drastically change your battery life I think when I have "discrete graphics" set on only my nvidia (2060) card is used and battery life is around 1h. With "switchable graphics" in bios and hybrid mode it's around 2.5h and with integrated mode it's 4.5h.
Please let me know it what I told you helped.
amamoh@reddit
only integrated GPU with Intel 1135G7
Zeti_Zero@reddit
:(
Aka_Yadav@reddit
How can I get it on fedora?
Zeti_Zero@reddit
Well I don't use fedora but from what I was able to read it works with fedora as well (should work for every distro I think) this side has some info of how to do it on fedora specifically https://support.system76.com/articles/system76-software/
kapijawastaken@reddit
8 hours... with a GAMING LAPTOP?!?!?!?!?! how the hell do i get 2 at most when my battery health is 97 percent
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Honestly, I have no clue. I am on power save profile, low brightness, doing web browsing and power usage can get under 6 watts
kapijawastaken@reddit
sick
TheCraftenShnahneh@reddit
can i get the same results but with mint? im already pretty used to ubuntu and debian based systems
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
You can try using power profiles ctl and see if that helps. Does mint support Wayland?
Littux@reddit
Using Firefox and setting up hw video decode alone doubles the battery life.
Chrome doesn't support hardware decoding and Chromium needs a compilation flag to enable it.
jeteodor@reddit
Mind i ask how do you enable that on firefox?
Littux@reddit
What GPU do you have? If it's Intel or AMD, run
vainfoin the terminal. If it runs successfully, open Firefox and go toabout:configand search for vaapi. Enable the ffmpeg vaapi option. Now, search for gfx.webrender.all and enable it. Restart Firefox and try watching a YouTube video. Installintel-gpu-toolsand runintel_gpu_topon Intel GPUs and check if theVideoutilisation is non zero. If it is non zero, then it is working properlyjeteodor@reddit
It's an integrated AMD one. Also probably doesn't matter what distro I'm on right? I'm on fedora
CallEither683@reddit
Hmm maybe time to try arch. I've used both zorin 17.1 and mint 22 and both nuked the battery life on my lenovo extreme gen 3. I'm sticking with mint right now and currently only get about 2 - 3 hours of battery from my previous 8 - 10.
From what I've seen latest ubuntu 24 has major issues with this I guess
rileyrgham@reddit
Then something was wrong on Windows. Were you always using dgpu in super bad ass mode? I've used both for years and Linux is about 25 to 30 percent less fuel efficient than windows doing similar tasks. And this on numerous laptops including an xmg neo gaming laptop.
ZMThein@reddit
In my experience, on the same hardware, Linux generally performs better than Windows.
Groovy_bugs@reddit
Linux improves you.
MarcCDB@reddit
Honestly, there was something wonky about your Windows install... It should even outperform Linux in power consumption in many cases.
Laughingatyou1000@reddit
I get about the same on windows as linux, lucky you
ecuasonic@reddit
What laptop do you have? Im thinking you either had the dgpu on or cpu boosting on windows.
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Hp victus
vanwaldi@reddit
I have a LG gram laptop with Intel CPU and it gives me greater battery runtimes and also better performance on battery on latest Fedora than Windows 11, while also keeping lower temps. Windows just has too much crap running in the background dragging performance down.
Ok_Leave_2149@reddit
Linux has gotton a lot better about battery life. It used to be really bad.
omniuni@reddit
I've been very impressed with the improvement in this area over the last couple of years. I rarely use my laptops on battery, especially because Linux has been historically pretty bad. The other day I was, and saw "4:25 remaining" and it occurred to me that the same laptop was getting less than two hours on Linux when I got it, and using my laptop on battery is suddenly very viable again.
ragsofx@reddit
I've had good battery life on Linux laptops for the last 7ish years. The trick is making sure all the power saving tech is enabled and working. Powertop is a really useful tool for tuning.
omniuni@reddit
Even with that, hardware support has been pretty hit-or-miss until recently.
arf20__@reddit
What laptop???
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Hp victus r0085cl
arf20__@reddit
wow thats super impressive, with NVIDIA
i only get 4h out of my thinkpad P53 RTX 3000 :'c
Farshief@reddit
My battery health is trash and windows was giving me about 30 minutes. With Manjaro running whatever the defaults are (I haven't bothered looking or adjusting those settings yet) I get about 1.25 hours on average
bongbrownies@reddit
Yeah it's been impressive, I'm running a 2017-2018 laptop and the battery life is incredibly bad by modern day standards, but it's better on Linux.
VangloriaXP@reddit
Is not the same for me on my acer laptop. On Fedora I need the auto-cpufreq, and it works.
Dull_Bathroom_9217@reddit
What distro are you using?
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Arch. I took a break from Linux when I got a new laptop for college. Later on I was unsatisfied with battery life on windows and the UI of windows 11 so I switched back to Arch Linux.
Donteezlee@reddit
What are you using to manage your laptops battery modes?
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Power profiles ctl
HappyToaster1911@reddit
Sae happened to me, its awesome!
No_Custard8238@reddit
hey normally isnt it the opposite im switching to linux and i wanna know
True-Trip-5308@reddit
You can get a really god life battery touching some things, i am able to get like 8 hours with low brightness no backlight on the keyboard and using my integrated grafic card plus power-saving profile I am using a asus tuf a16
No_Custard8238@reddit
ooh okay will look into it is there anyway to fully install linux without a usb (bcs i dont have one)
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Do you have any blank DVDs and a DVD writer?
No_Custard8238@reddit
bro who even uses dvds today?
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
If you don't have a USB drive then DVDs can also be used. Additionally you can also use drive droid on a rooted android phone to install linux
imreloadin@reddit
Honestly, if you debloat Windows you remove a lot of the processes that hog resources and drain the battery.
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Could very well be a possibility. I'm not sure how much hp omen software is impacting my battery
gold-rot49@reddit
what helped alot for me was using tlp on my laptop. have way better battery life using it on debian
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
I found that power profiles help a lot as well
A_Random_Sidequest@reddit
what laptop?
because Linux is better, yes... but sometimes and with some hardware, Linux doesn't activate the Turbo... keeping the CPU at stock settings only...
It's what happens with most/all older AMD A-apus... A4, A6, A8, A10, A12...
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Hp victus r0085cl with rtx 4070, Intel i7-13700h
epSos-DE@reddit
You have to state the distro too !
Linux is very diverse.
Are you running Ubuntu or Mint, which window desktop environment???
camatthew88@reddit (OP)
Running Arch Linux with Kde
SwampiiTV@reddit
I often say this but windows is better for desktops and linux is better for laptops and I'm not arguing it, multiple monitors has worked better in my experience with windows, but with a single monitor tiling managers are the way to go(not to say you can't do tiling on windows, it's just infinitely better on linux) and ofc the battery life is almost always much better on linux
Zeti_Zero@reddit
Tip for everyone with integrated and dedicated graphics card:
You can switch graphics card using system76-power which can drastically change your battery life.
I have also "discrete graphics" and "switchable graphics" options in bios which also changes battery life drastically.
I have Ryzen 7 4800h with RTX2060 and from my tests:
IonianBlueWorld@reddit
Energy consumption used to be a big issue in the past but the last few years things have improved a lot. I use Linux exclusively on my personal laptop and windows exclusively on my (different) laptop provided by my company, so it is hard to make a direct and reliable comparison. But it is clear to me that Linux has made huge strides forward the last five years or so. I don't think I'd go as far as say that it is better (it may be - I don't know for sure) but there is no meaningful gap anymore.
golden_bear_2016@reddit
this means you fucked up your Windows..
Linus has never been the OS if you want better battery management on a laptop
Janpeterbalkellende@reddit
Recently took over my work laptop for private use. Really good deal only the battery health is a bit low.
Ordered a new battery but it wasnt on time before my travels started. Got anout 1.5 hours of battery on windows. I dualbooted ubuntu and that lasts me up to 4 hours. Cant imagine what it will do with the new battery
EasySailorJack@reddit
Great to hear! All the best with your studies.