I am using Linux Mint Cinnamon on my Lenovo Ideapad 151 since past 6-months. I have noted that since I installed Mint on my system its battery run out time has decreased. Initially I thought it was because my battery was getting older but the other day I read that it was a known problem with Mint. Someone was saying that his battery was giving 5-hrs on Windows but only 2-hrs on Mint. So is it really a problem with Mint? What others have to say about this?
Battery overuse in Mint Cinnamon
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
G'day @Kamran and welcome to linux.org 
Cinnamon, which is Linux Mint's flagship, is the most resource-hungry DE (desktop environment), compared to MATE and Xfce.
That being said, I am not aware of the problems but they are documented elsewhere.
A search on Google using keywords
linux cinnamon battery usage
revealed this article from 2019
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=287988
so you may want to install tlp and give it a try, you can do it through Synaptic Package Manager or with
Wizard
Cinnamon, which is Linux Mint's flagship, is the most resource-hungry DE (desktop environment), compared to MATE and Xfce.
That being said, I am not aware of the problems but they are documented elsewhere.
A search on Google using keywords
linux cinnamon battery usage
revealed this article from 2019
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=287988
so you may want to install tlp and give it a try, you can do it through Synaptic Package Manager or with
Code:
sudo apt-get install tlpWizard
Brian beat me to it, I see.
I would advocate taking a Timeshift snapshot before and after.
Wiz
I would advocate taking a Timeshift snapshot before and after.
Wiz
Thanks to both Condobloke and Wizardfromoz.
l'll sure give it a try and report back. I do hope that tlp will solve the problem. By the way, would you recommend switching to some other distro. I use linux Mint on my laptop as the main OS ad only need to work on Office suite (I use LibreOffice). I am not for high end graphics and image editing.
Thanks again for your help.
Kamran.
l'll sure give it a try and report back. I do hope that tlp will solve the problem. By the way, would you recommend switching to some other distro. I use linux Mint on my laptop as the main OS ad only need to work on Office suite (I use LibreOffice). I am not for high end graphics and image editing.
Thanks again for your help.
Kamran.
I would seldom recommend to anyone to switch away from Mint, it is such a good distro, but you could try MATE version or Xfce.
Other than that, at terminal
will give us your PC specs, if you want to provide, and we can explore further options.
Wizard out for my Saturday night
Avagudweegend
Other than that, at terminal
Code:
inxi -Fxzwill give us your PC specs, if you want to provide, and we can explore further options.
Wizard out for my Saturday night
Avagudweegend
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Improve Power Usage / Battery Life In Linux With TLP
There are various tweaks that you can apply to your laptop to save battery power, but many of them depend on the hardware, Linux distributio...
Use TLP to Optimize the Power Consumption In Ubuntu | RefuGeeks
A guide on how to optimise the power usage in Ubuntu using a utility called TLC. If your Ubuntu device is eating too much power then this guide will help.
refugeeks.com
(instructions etc for Ubuntu will more than likely be fine for linux mint, because Linux mint is based on Ubuntu)
Last edited:
Improve Power Usage / Battery Life In Linux With TLP
There are various tweaks that you can apply to your laptop to save battery power, but many of them depend on the hardware, Linux distributio...www.webupd8.org
Use TLP to Optimize the Power Consumption In Ubuntu | RefuGeeks
A guide on how to optimise the power usage in Ubuntu using a utility called TLC. If your Ubuntu device is eating too much power then this guide will help.
(instructions etc for Ubuntu will more than likely be fine for linux, because Linux is based on Ubuntu)
Yes I am sure these should work fine for Mint as well. Anyway, I shall update you on this.
Thanks again for your help.
Kamran.
Hi, I prefer TLPUI for ease of use, here you go: https://www.linuxuprising.com/2018/09/tlpui-is-graphical-user-interface-for.html
Thanks LeoR for your kind help.
Update:
I installed TLP 3 days back but I have noticed that since I installed the app the performance has slowed down and also LibreOffice has started behaving weirdly -- it takes long time in starting print preview and sometimes is unable to restore previously saved files. Is there some tweaking required to get past this issue?
Update:
I installed TLP 3 days back but I have noticed that since I installed the app the performance has slowed down and also LibreOffice has started behaving weirdly -- it takes long time in starting print preview and sometimes is unable to restore previously saved files. Is there some tweaking required to get past this issue?
Have you done any changes in TLP or did you just install it? TLP itself does not speed up your system, your settings will. I set up the CPU speed on AC power to Conservative instead of the default Powersave - made an impressive difference in speed. CPU speed jumped from 800MHz to 2100-2500MHz. I did this with TLPUI, which is very easy to use.
No I didn't make any changes but after reading your message I think it is probably due to these default settings that I am seeing the weird behavior. If I do change the settings as you have described don't you think it will kill the very reason that I installed TLP for. Perhaps, this is how TLP works, by decreasing the CPU speed to conserve power.
I'm not sure, but I think TLP does not change _anything_ at all by just installing it. You have to manually do every change in TLP to make it active. Depending on how much power you want to save, you will loose performance - thats the deal. I prefer to run my laptop with AC power almost all time, so I have speeded i up instead of slowing down. Still I have CPU setting for battey operation as Powersave, which will slow down performance in that case.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
How long does your battery last ?
Well! What I have read about TLP is that it works by resetting some of default Linux settings and it does this by default after installation and then restart. All these default settings of TLP can be adjusted according to one's needs. Being quite a nerd in Linux I dare not change any of these settings on my own.
As for the time of battery run-out, it was somewhere near 5 hrs on Windows 10 and about 3 to 3.5 hrs on Linux Mint and somewhat better after TLP but I cannot yet quantify it.
As for the time of battery run-out, it was somewhere near 5 hrs on Windows 10 and about 3 to 3.5 hrs on Linux Mint and somewhat better after TLP but I cannot yet quantify it.
