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A comment on Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell XPS 13. Parent comment

Re:Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell X... by rawfan on Thursday October 25, 2018 @07:35AM (#18300107)
From what I heard, this is not true for the Dell XPS 13 and other new Notebooks that supposedly run well with Linux. I get almost 5 hours out of my decade-old Thinkpad T410 (original battery). My 2018 Macbook Pro 13" with touchbar only gets me through 2/3rds of the workday (older models or 15" work way longer). Apple put in smaller batteries and optimized their own (!) apps to compensate. You're pretty much forced to use Safari if your don't want even worse battery life.
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Re:Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell X... by jammygit on Thursday October 25, 2018 @08:58AM (#18300514)
I find its all WiFi. On an xps 13 with ubuntu, I get 10-12 hours on low brightness without wifi, but often 4-6 otherwise with wifi. Its really nice for roadtrips.
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Re:Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell X... by robocat on Thursday October 25, 2018 @09:11AM (#18300600)
I wonder whether that is causation or correlation?

AFAIK the WiFi hardware doesn't use much power itself, although I might guess that background protocol chitchat could cause CPU usage. I think that when I am usually using WiFi I am also usually using a browser that chews power.

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Re:Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell X... by chadlavi on Thursday October 25, 2018 @11:48AM (#18301822)
Turning off wifi is probably just turning off your ability to do a lot of heavy processing as you interact with the internet, right?
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Re:Ditching Windows: 2 Weeks with Ubuntu Linux on the Dell X... by jandrese on Thursday October 25, 2018 @03:33PM (#18303873)
This is my thought. Turn off wifi and you're no longer running the cpu and memory monster that is a web browser.

But this is something Apple does right. My wife noticed that she can get around 50% more battery life out of her Macbook using Safari instead of Firefox. (7-8 hours instead of 4-5).

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