Linux battery life

Linux with a highly optimized kernel gives me really good battery life on my T420. 12 hours running Gentoo vs 10 running Windows 7

>>56105140
I tried Mint several times and my laptop usually ran quite hot like it isn't clocking down when idling and burned through my battery quickly.

What distro do you use?

>>56105173
Gentoo

Basically any source based distro will give you good battery life

>>56105240
Awesome, thank you.

>>56105107
yes, x220 running Debian gnome with tlp properly setup gives me great battery life, much better than on Windows (7 - never tested 10) tbqh

>>56105107
T400 here. I get about 3 hours with Debian KDE and maybe an hour on Windows 7/8.

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>>56105627
>>56105465

why do some use powertop and others tlp?

Im using powertop --auto-tune and actually get about half an hour more battery life-time then on windows.
But more importantly my CPU fan spins down more frequently / the notebook is less loud overall in webbrowsing mode.

>>56105173
>tried Mint several times and my laptop usually ran quite hot like it isn't clocking down when idling and burned through my battery quickly.
>What distro do you use?
did you install laptop-mode-tools or tlp?
if not, than we've found your problem.
you don't have to use a source based distro to get much better battery life on linux (compared to windows)

>>56105795
tlp is the best because it restores shit to performance settings when you plug ac in, power top is okay, but you have to manually setup a service for it to run on boot if you want it too.

>>56106064
ah, thanks for clarifying

openSUSE is known for insane battery life on laptops, but pick your favorite distro and install a package called "TLP" and you won't have any problems. You can configure it a lot, but I'd leave the defaults unless you know what you're doing.

>>56106292
is it possible to detune the cpu a lot or even undervolt it?

I'd love to have the possibility to make a profile that has the cpu down to 300mhz or something with really low voltage when I'm only writing stuff or something

>>56106364
Funny you should ask, I literally read this yesterday:
https://fedoramagazine.org/performance-profiling-perf/

>>56106364
>>56106425
Oh, shit, nevermind, that's not what I thought it was.

>>56106364
This came up in a quick Google search, but I'm not sure if it's RedHat specific, I'm sure you could get something similar on other distros:

https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/6/html-single/Performance_Tuning_Guide/#s-cpu-cpufreq

this thread has been really helpful so far, thanks everyone

>>56106425
>>56106499
cool, thanks!