Preface: I ran into a sound card crackling issue a while back and wrote a post about it: Fixing crackling from an external USB sound card on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon via Thunderbolt Dock Tried that method, and it turned out to be pretty much useless. Basically, every time I plug in the Thunderbolt 3 dock, TLP just doesn’t apply the “power-saving exclusion” setting to the corresponding device.

ThinkPad batteries are lithium-ion, so capacity loss over time is normal. But my brand-new replacement battery dropped to 97% in a month, and it won’t charge past 99%. That’s definitely fucked up. I remember there used to be a ThinkPad Windows tool for recalibrating the battery — drain it completely, charge it back up, let it re-estimate capacity. Except I’m on Linux. And after I dug up a Windows To Go drive and booted into Windows, that ThinkPad tool was gone anyway, so I had no idea how to calibrate. Good thing TLP exists on Linux and can recalibrate the battery. One command, that’s it.

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.