I am running mint on my dell and the only thing i am surprised is the bad battery life on Linux. I’m getting 1 hour backup while on windows i was getting close to 3 hours. Can someone help me out here?
Also do you really need a full DE when just using a browser on the go? I use i3wm without a compositor on battery and my wifi+firefox battery life went from 5h to about 7-8h.
Power management is quite frustrating on Linux, as this is supposed to be tuned by the OEM, but many OEM never bother to tune it on linux.
Even large OEM like dell only ensures all their hardwares “work” on linux, but don’t do much further tuning. And many like hp and lenovo sometimes don’t even to bother make their hardware work.
This is why buying from small manufactures with good linux support is important. They not only support both windows and linux well, many often come with additional perks like built in country with reasonable labor practice, repairability, upgradablity, no phone tree in support, and supporting Linux desktop development.
Personally, my framework AMD has great battery life on linux by default. And I am sure manufacture like system76, tuxedo, slimbook, starlab, novacustom, etc. all works well.
I am running mint on my dell and the only thing i am surprised is the bad battery life on Linux. I’m getting 1 hour backup while on windows i was getting close to 3 hours. Can someone help me out here?
Try a few of the options here. I personally have used powertop and tlp and they help, but the best mix for your hardware might be different.
I can second TLP, it’s wonderful.
There is a GUI for it as well that works well.
Also do you really need a full DE when just using a browser on the go? I use i3wm without a compositor on battery and my wifi+firefox battery life went from 5h to about 7-8h.
Power management is quite frustrating on Linux, as this is supposed to be tuned by the OEM, but many OEM never bother to tune it on linux.
Even large OEM like dell only ensures all their hardwares “work” on linux, but don’t do much further tuning. And many like hp and lenovo sometimes don’t even to bother make their hardware work.
This is why buying from small manufactures with good linux support is important. They not only support both windows and linux well, many often come with additional perks like built in country with reasonable labor practice, repairability, upgradablity, no phone tree in support, and supporting Linux desktop development.
Personally, my framework AMD has great battery life on linux by default. And I am sure manufacture like system76, tuxedo, slimbook, starlab, novacustom, etc. all works well.
Check the power saving settings of your desktop environment. Also check the CPU performance settings if they are separate.