this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
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I've installed TLP on my Lenovo ThinkBook laptop and was wondering if there are additional steps I can take to extend the battery life when using the laptop unplugged.

Could you please share more tips and tricks for maximizing battery life on Linux laptops?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I am not sure what graphics you have, but I have an older-ish laptop with hybrid 10-series Nvidia graphics which do not fully power down even with TLP installed. I was finding that it continued to draw a continuous 7W even in an idle state. I installed envycontrol so that I can manually turn off/on hybrid graphics or force the use of integrated graphics. I noticed my battery life jumped from 2-3 hours to 4-5 hours after I did this, and unless I am gaming (which I rarely do on this laptop) I hardly ever need the dgpu in this.

I also use TLP. I have tried auto-cpufreq and powertop, and I found TLP offered the most granular control and worked the best for my system/needs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

My laptop has Intel UHD graphics. Things are slightly better since I enabled TLP.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Do you know if blacklisting nouveau actually disables the dGPU? It's a work laptop so the iGPU is more than enough so I figured I wouldn't bother with bumblebee or whatnot, but the battery life is shit :'(

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Sorry for the late reply. It sounds like it could be due to the dGPU if your battery life is terrible. I don't know if that method would work or not. I had to try a couple different things before I eventually settled on envycontrol.