I got a new used laptop and am especially interested in getting the most time I can between battery re-chargings. I searched the topic, and the 2 most popular suggestions were to install TLP and to use a Tiling Windows desktop environment.
I tried TLP, but if anything I feel like the battery was discharging faster, so I uninstalled TLP and TLP-RDW.
If I understand correctly, a Tiling Windows DE like “dwm” would replace LXQt. Wouldn’t that kind of negate “Lubuntu”? Like, the whole point of Lubuntu is its desktop environment, isn’t it?
I’m interested in optimizing for battery life. I’m getting a few hours right now, but would really like 6+ hours if possible. Would you suggest any changes within Lubuntu? Or, is there another distro that is, in your view, better for battery life? (When you search the topic, Lubuntu always comes up as a recommendation, and there is never a direct comparison of Lubuntu with the other recommendations, so it’s hard to know. I tried FossaPup, but it doesn’t do significantly better. It performs worse than Windows for battery life.)
I don’t mean to be offensive by asking if I should try a different distro. It’s not a criticism of Lubuntu, which I basically like a lot. I would love to find out there is something I can do within Lubuntu to extend battery life.
I’ve never really explored battery life on systems, as my preferred system is a desktop.
In the little play I’ve made, the most important thing to me was settings/configuration to the base system you’ve made (what tlp attempts to achieve), and to a far less significant extend the software you’re using (ie. CPU cycles of what is running).
Sharing resources (ie. DE & apps) may also impact performance, in that wasted RAM can cause swapping which will chew both cyles & of course power; but here it’s the user’s actions/choices that will either help or impede their flavor choice.
FYI: I don’t mind Ubuntu flavor talk in support (of if it’s helpful with a point); but other distributions belong in off-topic. In my own play though; and I don’t just use Ubuntu/Lubuntu - all GNU/Linux are pretty much the same with primary differences being software stack installed & age of that software stack components; ie. factors in the owners control for the most part
Have you tried Gnome with this extension?
You can switch off cores and regulate max frequency and try different governors.
I have no idea how to use those things in non-graphical way or if the changes would persist if changing desktop to Lxqt.
But if you can get more battery life out of gnome, its a start of hope, and you can google for cpufreq usage in terminal?
I myself got rid of a overheating problem with that extension.
Also no idea what you are using your laptop for.
And if there is no battery, then there is no battery. Maybe buy a new battery? Some version of Lubuntu showd me the health of my battery, it was about half of the original capacity. After new battery, all is ok.
The only thing that annoyed me in Lubuntu was the screensaver. I uninstalled the screensaver and set the screen to blanking (switch off) after very short time of non usage.