Maximizing battery life on Arch Linux

garnish · 2024-10-01 01:51:33

Hi, I'm looking for some help concerning battery life on Arch Linux.

I want my laptop to have maximum performance on ac and maximum battery life while it's not plugged in so I was wondering if anyone had a setup like that using all the different power management tools available on Arch like autocpu-freq, powertop, tlp and NVIDIA PRIME.
I know it's not recommended to use some of these programs together but I've read if you disable certain settings it's possible.

I'm getting about 2 hours of normal web browsing and youtube playback at 5% brightness(the lowest my screen goes without dimming), compared to 5 hours plus on Windows right now but I haven't done much yet other than installing tlp and then limiting my charge to 80%.

Also, is there a way to change the refresh rate of a screen automatically when it's plugged in and when it's not plugged in? This is very normal and easy to do on Windows but I can't find a way to do it on Linux. I want my laptop to have 60hz when not plugged in and then switch back to 120hz on ac, so I can save juice.
Any help would be appreciated.

jl2 · 2024-10-01 07:59:47

The things that will give you the most power savings are:
* monitor brightness (this one will really dominate, so before you go tinkering anywhere else, just turn it down)
* cpufreq will save a little, but not really a lot
* Also you can save a little bit of gpu usage by going down to 60hz

These are very easy to do, and will give you like 80%-90% of all available savings without to much of a hassle.

And generally:
* use a more lightweight WM/DE (sway, i3, lxde, etc instead of kde, gnome, hyprland)
* disable animations. This one is a big deal
* hardware acceleration
* I guess you have a gaming laptop with dual gpus, so don't use the dgpu except where it's really necessary.
(these ones are hard to make dynamic, so they probably won't be changeable on plugin)

Here are some links:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CPU_fr … CPI_events
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Backli … _utilities (use with the above!)

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardwa … celeration
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hybrid_graphics
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME

What DE/WM do you use?
What CPU/GPUs setup do you have?

Last edited by jl2 (2024-10-01 08:03:18)

garnish · 2024-10-01 11:15:17

monitor brightness, Also you can save a little bit of gpu usage by going down to 60hz

I wish there was a way to automate this stuff as I said in my OP. Like a script that will automatically change my refresh rate and brightness down to 60hz and 5% brightness whenever the charger is disconnected and then keep the brightness the same but bump up the refresh rate to 120hz.

I've read almost all those pages but they have lots of contradictory and confusing things in them so I came here to ask people and what their experiences have been instead.

I use KDE and I have a 13th Gen Intel i5 CPU with Intel Iris Xe graphics and also a dedicated NVIDIA GPU.

seth · 2024-10-01 12:01:01

For KDE powerdevil allows some configuration depending on the charger state, alternatively TLP runs different profiles.

I've read almost all those pages but they have lots of contradictory and confusing things in them

Bullshit.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-10-01 01:51:33

Maximizing battery life on Arch Linux

#2 2024-10-01 07:59:47

Re: Maximizing battery life on Arch Linux

#3 2024-10-01 11:15:17

Re: Maximizing battery life on Arch Linux

#4 2024-10-01 12:01:01

Re: Maximizing battery life on Arch Linux

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