[Tip to improve battery life]Amazing battery after setting some tlp options!

aquasp

Hi, thanks for doing such a great job with this distro. I was using ubuntu budgie because battery life was better, but after I compared the tlp default of solus and budgie, I noticed that budgie had some options activated while solus didin't. I just copied the budgie config from budgie and put under solus, and now battery is flying!

This is the file of tlp in budgie, in case someone wants to compare with your current configs:
https://ghostbin.co/paste/tam5j

palto42

aquasp Just found this thread and would like to understand the differences in TLP seetings between SOlus and Ubuntu Budgie, but the link to your pastebin doesn't work anymore. Can you maybe refresh it?
In current Ubuntu TLP package they seem to just provide the default tlp.conf which has no extra settings enabled/changed.

synth-ruiner

it's a bit confusing to refer to Ubuntu Budgie as "budgie" 😁

thanks, might have to explore tlp configuration on my laptop 🙂

aquasp

synth-ruiner Oh, you are right. I will edit

aquasp

synth-ruiner actually I can't edit, sad

SOLUSfiddler

aquasp
You should be able to:
Click on the three dots next to "Reply", select "Edit".
Of course one con only edit one's own posts but with your post you should be able to.

kyrios

aquasp You can edit your post until somebody post after.

SOLUSfiddler

kyrios
Great - I hadn't realised that.

stalebrim

palto42 The differences to default config are:

The scaling governor on battery is set to schedutil instead of powersave. In terms of savings they're almost on par, but schedutil yields much better performance. The governor on AC is set to performance.
Wifi power saving on battery is OFF
SOUND_POWER_SAVE_ON_BAT is disabled
USB_AUTOSUSPEND is disabled

palto42

stalebrim Thanks, so assume suggested improvements have all been added in current package.

palto42

I had another look at the current tlp.conf settings in the Solus package and some doubt if all of them are generally good.
For example the change of the governor in AC mode to "performance" might not be desirable (at least not for me), since it sets the CPU permanently to max frequency as per [REF][GUIDE]Most up to date guide on CPU governors, I/O schedulers and more!.
Also the changes to WiFi, sound and USB may not be generally required and may reduce battery life, so not sure why Solus package deviates from TLP defaults here.

To me it seems that those non-default settings have just been maintained from older versions and may not be optimal anymore with latest release/kernel.

stalebrim

palto42 I agree that the AC governor should be in line with the governor Solus normally uses. TLP defaults to powersave on AC too. I don't remember why I set it to performance in the PR, it could've been an oversight from me.

The changes to WiFi, sound and USB date much further back and my guess for disabling those features is that they cause issues with certain hardware.

palto42

stalebrim It seems the default governor depends on individual setup, at least on my Lenovo it defaults to "ondemand" for both AC/DC.

On T9939 Update tlp to 1.5.0 I commented to revert back to tlp defaults unless there is a good reason still.

stalebrim

palto42 As far as I know, Solus momentarily switches to performance during boot, then at the end of the boot it switches to something else.

The commit for disabling wifi power saving says "Attempt fix for wireless on battery by disabling wifi power save.", so I do highly believe the other tweaks follow the same rationale and hence are still adequate.