Re:One Year with ThinkPad and Linux (From MacBook Pro)
by yaantc on Friday August 28, 2020 @11:26AM
(#24305982)
Getting excellent battery life on Linux nowadays should be as simple as installing the "tlp" (the laptop project) package. I can't compare to a Mac, but I use both Thinkpad and Latitude and on both get better battery life on Debian than colleagues on Windows 10 (also and related: much less fan noise...).
Now he complains about battery life after one year. There is a Thinkpad feature that helps a lot: one can limit the charge level to a configurable value. And tlp does support this for Thinkpad. By just limiting the charge level to 90% for example, and making sure never to discharge the battery completely, one can greatly extend a laptop battery life. You can't use the range fully, but then the battery is much less stressed: Li-Ion batteries suffer at the extreme of the charge range. As the battery last enough for me (and charges quickly) I never found this range reduction to be a problem. And my 5 years TP battery is just fine.
The Dell Latitude also supports this BTW, but it's in the BIOS and not integrated with tlp.
Now he complains about battery life after one year. There is a Thinkpad feature that helps a lot: one can limit the charge level to a configurable value. And tlp does support this for Thinkpad. By just limiting the charge level to 90% for example, and making sure never to discharge the battery completely, one can greatly extend a laptop battery life. You can't use the range fully, but then the battery is much less stressed: Li-Ion batteries suffer at the extreme of the charge range. As the battery last enough for me (and charges quickly) I never found this range reduction to be a problem. And my 5 years TP battery is just fine.
The Dell Latitude also supports this BTW, but it's in the BIOS and not integrated with tlp.