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This tip is about the how to Maximize Battery Life of a Linux Laptop. So read this free guide, How to Maximize Battery Life of a Linux Laptop. If you have query related to same article you may contact us.
How to Maximize Battery Life of a Linux Laptop – Guide
ONE laptop that hits 8 hours on Windows 10 usually struggles to hit 4 hours on a Linux distro like Ubuntu. Why? Depends on. It is a complex, controversial and controversial issue. And given the large volume of laptop and PC hardware that the Linux kernel must support is also not surprising.
The tendency of Linux users to extend the life of older hardware devices whose batteries have already had a few cycles also plays a role in why you generally get less battery life with Linux than with Windows. But don’t get me wrong: Linux is energy efficient when tuned to the hardware it’s running on. However, if you’re running an off-disk OS with a comprehensive configuration, you’ll need to tweak it a little more to improve battery life on Linux.
How to Maximize Your Linux LaptopBattery
Use built-in power settings
The first thing to check is the power settings. Every Linux operating system offers some level of power management that lets you control how the laptop behaves on battery power. Settings for power management when plugged in are also included.
For example, on Ubuntu you can find these options under System Preferences > Power.
After opening the settings screen, adjust the settings in the battery usage column. For example, you have the option to “Suspend if inactive for…” and set a time or condition. Or you can specify what happens when the power supply is critically low.
When the lid is closed, you can automatically pause the activity, although you may prefer a different option.
While it’s not as detailed as the comparison screen on Windows, there’s enough here to change the way your Linux laptop behaves in specific scenarios.
Reduce the brightness of your monitor
Another surefire way to increase battery life is to dim your screen. The easiest way to do this is to check the keyboard for shortcut brightness controls. However, if your keyboard doesn’t have them, you’ll have to use your operating system controls.
To find them, open System Preferences > Brightness & Lock and find the brightness slider. Adjust this and find a viable compromise between lower brightness and readability. Whatever you do, remember that avoiding full brightness is the best solution for improving battery life.
Also look for a setting called Dim screen to save power. If available, check the box.
Also, consider relying on a lighter desktop background. According to the Ubuntu team, darker backgrounds use up 1% more power than lighter ones.
Disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth
Connectivity options are always an issue to maintain battery life.
Wi-Fi can be a big battery drain as it frequently checks (searches) for new networks to connect to or refreshes all open tabs on the website. To overcome this, the simple option is to disable Wi-Fi.
It’s easy to do: click on the wireless network icon in the system tray (usually represented as a series of curved lines). In the menu that appears, click Enable Wi-Fi to deselect and disable Wi-Fi.
When it comes to Bluetooth, older hardware is more likely to have issues. Bluetooth 4.0 LTE is very resource efficient, so if your laptop have, you should be fine. However, if your computer does not have hardware that supports Bluetooth 4.0 LTE, you will encounter higher battery consumption.
To get around this, find your Bluetooth settings (usually via the Bluetooth icon in your system tray) and toggle it to Off. Of course, be careful when using the necessary Bluetooth devices as they will be deactivated immediately!
Another option is to disable older Bluetooth hardware and buy a USB Bluetooth 4.0 LTE dongle. And if you want to turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with a single tap, try Airplane Mode. button on your keyboard.
Close all applications you are not using
An easy-to-ignore battery drain on any system – and Linux is no different – is keeping apps open that are no longer being used. Multitasking can drain your battery!
Even if you are using another application, the other open applications will consume CPU and RAM. They are not frozen silently in the background. These applications can be your browser, email client, Skype for Linux or whatever. Not only do they draw power from the battery for additional CPU and RAM resources, their presence also means the fan has to work harder… and guess where the fan gets its power from?
Of course, you should close these unused apps until you need them again. Right-click the icon on the taskbar, launcher or dock and select Exit. In the meantime, if you’re having trouble closing apps on Linux, these tips should help.
Eject any external/removable media
Hard drives consume battery life. All these moving parts need something to feed them. The same applies to DVD drives. But its battery is designed for these devices. And unless you’ve switched to a solid-state drive, your hard drive is practically necessary.
Removable media, however, is a different story. If you don’t use it, you must remove it. While external HDDs and DVD drives have their own power supply, flash drives and SD cards do not have their own power supply. So it makes perfect sense to eject these media devices when not in use.
But it doesn’t end there. While the laptop battery should be able to handle DVD usage, it’s a bad idea to rely on this unit unless you expect the battery to run out of power quickly. Removing the disk from the computer when not in use will prevent sudden autoloading.
However, for best results, you should remove the entire optical drive and replace it with an SSD.
Manage your Flash settings (or uninstall)
Ah, Adobe Flash. Despite finally getting an end date from Adobe’s developers, Flash remains software you have to use to visit certain websites. It is far from ideal, but even the final of its lifespan in 2020, you will likely need to install Flash on your Linux laptop.
It is clear that using Flash is a huge resource drain on your system, with huge battery drain. What’s the answer?
Several options are available. First, you can simply uninstall Adobe Flash and hope for the best while browsing. Alternatively, you can configure your browser so that Flash-based videos do not play automatically.
If you are using Mozilla Firefox, open the menu and select Add-ons > Plugins. Set Shockwave Flash to Never activate here. Or use the Ask to Activate option if you need Flash from time to time. That way, when a video loads, you’ll be prompted to enable Flash before it plays.
In Chrome, type chrome://settings in your browser’s address bar and find Content Settings and then Flash. Here you can toggle whether sites are allowed to run Flash. There is also the option to ask first. If you think you need Flash, it would be wise to enable these two settings. On the other hand, you can just disable Flash.
Also with Chrome you can try the chrome://flags/ screen and look for HTML instead of Flash. This setting forces websites to render HTML5 media instead of Flash; if enabled, videos will not play in Flash.
Install TLP for Linux
Finally, there is some great software you can install on Linux to help improve your laptop battery life. Featuring several customizable settings, TLP, however, comes with a default configuration file to help you get started.
To install TLP for Ubuntu you will need to add the repository:
As with any PPA, you will need to perform an update before installing the software:
IBM ThinkPad users will need to install the dedicated packages:
If you are running Fedora, add the repositories with
Then check the repository and install:
Whichever method you use, enter
to run TLP for the first time. After setup, it will run every time the computer boots.
Standard usage with TLP is fine, but you may prefer to tweak some of the settings to suit your laptop. running the configuration guide in your preferred text editor will allow you to adjust the settings
Various settings can be found in the TLP documentation, but they should not be applied carelessly. It’s actually safer to change a setting, reboot (needed to apply the changes), and see how the setting helps or hurts your laptop battery. Please note that due to the many differences between laptops, what works for you may not work for your friends.
Final note
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