Installing and Testing the Latest Linux Power-Saving Kernel

A few days ago both Phoronix and OMGUbuntu ran articles saying Fedora has done a ton of optimization for power saving, plus some bullshit claiming you have to use Fedora to get the battery life improvements.

Fedora’s Power Tweaks Dropped The Power Use On A ThinkPad By ~30% https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-Battery-Numbers-2018

For Better Battery Life on Linux Try Fedora http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/02/better-battery-life-on-fedora-linux

Which is total bullshit, honestly.

Because Ubuntu can do it too.

The articles mention two of the most important optimizations:

• Panel Self Refresh handling
• SATA power management changes

The first one can be enabled by adding i915.enable_psr=1 to /etc/default/grub, but I tested it and it hard-locked my system, so I left it off.

The other one is SATA power saving, which they also framed as Fedora-only. This is where we thank the TLP developers, because they provide an Ubuntu kernel.

http://download.linrunner.de/packages/

Download the kernel and install it. The install may conflict with UEFI signed packages, but whatever, just use it anyway.

After rebooting you can enable power saving together with TLP. Personally I tested it and it’s just okay. You can combine it with this older method.

Links: https://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/18412.html https://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/18653.html