I’m still getting used to OpenSuse and Linux generally so there’s still a lot for me to learn. Anyways, I’ll just get straight to the point, is there a way to save battery power more efficiently on my HP Probook 4740s?
The initial battery time was around 8 hours (laptop came with OpenSuse Enterprise, but at that time I was still on dual boot Windows 7), after 3 years of having my laptop I installed OpenSuse Leap 42.1 and the battery easily lasted 5-6 hours (same on Windows 7). After OpenSuse 42.2 released, I decided to completely reinstall my system and use the new fancy stuff. Now my battery lasts 3-4 hours at max, only less.
Is there anything (tools, programs, methods) I could easily manage to save battery power?
Any information or suggestions are more than welcome.
Hi, and welcome to the Forums! To try and optimize battery life you may try the package “tlp” and/or “powertop” looking at its “tunable” tab to see what can possibly optimized on your laptop.
Both packages are available from the main OSS repository.
But please be aware that if you never replaced the original battery, what you see might be the result of normal battery wearout: Li ion battery have an expected lifespan of about 5 years even if they are correctly managed.
Also note that due to some limitations in the SATA drivers, Linux currently cannot send laptops to as deep a sleep state as Win does, so with recent processors it is quite normal to see about half battery life in normal usage compared to Win with light workloads.
By the way, in the “Idle Stats” tab in powertop you can see how deep in the “Idle” states your processor currently runs.