On Mon, 2023-10-09 at 11:06 -0400, Matt Morgan wrote:
I really appreciate this. But when I run Powertop, almost everything
is marked as good. The few that were marked bad all had to do with
power to USB devices upon suspend, which sounds like it wouldn't be
relevant while the computer is running. In any case, I changed
everything I could, and still the battery runs down at about
1%/minute, i.e. it lasts about 100 minutes. In any case, I learned
something from your replies, so even though it hasn't helped with the
computer, I'm glad I asked!
With a lot of devices battery life is extended by the OS switching off
things, or putting them into low power: Monitoring the WiFi signal
use, and reducing transmission power if it's not needed to blast out at
full power. Putting the sound system into standby if it's not doing
anything. Throttling the CPU back when idle. Reducing the screen
brightness when idle, or all the time. Putting drives into low power
mode, etc.
This all has consequences. It's judgement of how low it can turn the
WiFi down may be wrong. You may miss the first second of everything
going through the sound system (I have this, and it means system beeps
and alerts aren't heard, and sound editing is messed up). Drives that
keep going to sleep and waking up again every few seconds don't save
power, and wear the drives out prematurely. Et cetera...
Individually, these things don't use a great deal of power, so things
like powertop mayn't paint the full picture. But collectively, and
continually, it adds up.
One of things that pained me when I got into Linux about 20 years ago
was CUPS continually polling and logging something every few seconds.
Certain services may do that, and some of them probably aren't needed
on a laptop, particularly if you're not networking between things on a
LAN.
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