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  • What are your favorite battery saving tweaks on Solus?

Hi everyone, I've been a little obsessed with getting the best battery life out of my laptop recently without compromising aesthetics (animations, screen resolution, etc...). Right now I'm getting around 7 hours of battery life on my Optimus laptop by using bbswitch to turn off the discrete graphics card. However, I feel like I might be missing something. What do you all do to improve battery life?

al_l_en Yeah how does it work?
Right now I'm having to use only the discrete nvidia graphics card which severely reduce the battery life.
BTW I'm using TLP for battery improvement

      PowerTOP in autotune mode is good enough for me (but don't forget to calibrate first).
      I also refer dark themes but this isn't really a tweak, it more a matter of taste even if it helps.

      Regarding the GPU, on optimus I always blacklist nouveau and tbqf, i almost only use the iGPU.

        Abhisht02 Solus only supports always on optimus out of the box. right? To disable graphics card you have to uninstall drivers, is that the setup you have now?

          al_l_en Abhisht02 Right now I'm just using bbswitch to properly turn off the graphics card on boot. Setting up bbswitch was a little complicated so I'll share what I did to load the module at boot.

          1. Make sure you have the nouveau (or nvidia) drivers installed. (If you don't bbswitch can't
            properly communicate with the gpu to disable the power)

          2. Open/Create the file /etc/modules/ with the contents bbswitch load_state=0. This will tell the system to enable the bbswitch module at boot.

          3. Open/Create the file /etc/modprobe.d/bbswitch.conf with the contents options bbswitch load_state=0. This will tell bbswitch to disable and powerdown the gpu at boot.

          4. Open/Create the file /etc/modules-load.d/bbswitch.conf with the contents bbswitch. This will enable the bbswitch module in systemd.

          5. Then I added the kernel parameters nouveau.modeset=0 i915.modeset=1 in /etc/kernel/cmdline just to be sure nothing got loaded improperly before bbswitch got loaded.

          6. Finally run sudo usysconf run -f to write the changes you've made to the boot sequence.

          I originally found most of this information in this guide in case you want to explore more.

                Hi...use Budgie Desktop Settings until you're happy with the feel of your desktop. I use a custom top panel and install Plank for a dock as a more macOS-like setup. Then I set up keyboard shortcuts (Super + directions for workspaces, Alt + directions for moving window tiles). Finally, I install and set up libinput-gestures for multi-touch on my touchpad.

                  11 days later

                  alecbcs That would be great. I love Solus but I can not stand to have the fans running constantly. I have never managed to have stable Solus on my XPS 15 because of that.

                      Mayeut I've run Solus on my XPS 15 consistantly for about a year and a half now with the fans only turning on periodically. Just curious, but did turning off the dedicated GPU using bbswitch fix the fan issue for you?

                          alecbcs I have never managed to operate bbswitch properly. I had randomly freezes, crashes or fans at 100% continuously.

                              Mayeut Interesting! What model of XPS are you on? I have a XPS 15 9560 and I had to add acpi_rev_override=1 as a kernel parameter to prevent my CPU from locking up occasionally and freezing the system.
                              Note: Only add this kernel parameter if your using the intel graphics card. Otherwise, from my experience, it will crash the kernel during boot.

                                  alecbcs I have exactly the same model. Maybe I'll have to give Solus a chance with your advice. If you're OK I'll come back and post here what the installation gives.

                                    I use everyday the same laptop model (full HD screen) with Solus since version 2017.01.01.0 and it works very well.

                                      kyrios do you use the Intel Integrated Graphics or the Nvidia card?

                                          you convinced me, I will try again very quickly. I may have made mistakes before.

                                          kyrios Nice that's basically the same for me as well. I've found the the Intel Card is really enough for mostly everything and the long battery life is excellent! Are you using bbswitch to power off the Nvidia card? Also do you need the acpi_rev_override=1 kernel parameter on your system?

                                          Actually on the topic of XPS 15s, are you still using the Killer Wireless card? I had to switch it out for a Intel chip a while ago for better wireless stability on WPA2 Coperate Systems but I've been curious if anyone else has experienced issues with their wireless.