Did You know that you can improve battery Life on Linux Laptop ? If you are facing an issue in regards to battery draining in a laptop running Linux then this article helps to fix those issues. Today, I am going to show you a perfect tool that allows you to improve battery life without making any compromises. Auto CPU FREQ which is also known as automatic CPU speed & power Optimizer for Linux based on active monitoring of a laptop’s battery state, CPU usage, temperatures, and system load.
That being said, let’s go ahead and learn about this tool. One of the problems with Linux on laptops is that the CPU will run in an unoptimized manner which will negatively reflect on battery life. For example, the CPU will run using a performance governor with turbo boot enabled regardless if it’s plugged into a power Source or not. Using tools like TLP may extend battery life, but it also comes with its own set of problems like losing turbo boost.
With that said, it’s better to avoid using TLP and start using auto-cpufreq.
This tool aims to replace TLP in terms of functionality, save battery like TLP and also let the Linux kernel do most of the heavy lifting.
Before installing the auto CPU freq tool, it’s always a better practice to uninstall TLP to avoid conflict. Then head over to the GitHub page and go through it to learn more about this tool. To install this package use installer script. Copy and Paste the below code inside the terminal & execute this command to start setting up this package.
git clone https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq.git
cd auto-cpufreq && sudo ./auto-cpufreq-installerOnce it’s done, you can learn the usage of this tool by typing this command.
auto-cpufreq --helpTo improve the battery life on your Linux laptop, you need to run auto CPU-freq as a daemon service. To Do so, type this command
sudo auto-cpufreq --installthe install option puts the system in a balanced mode which works best on various systems. It also optimizes the CPU automatically based on the demand. You can also use the performance option to run the CPU in high-frequency mode.
That’s it, now auto CPU freq has started running as a daemon service. You can verify the running status by typing this command.
sudo systemctl status auto-cpufreqIt will disable the gnome power profiles service, which would otherwise cause conflict and problems. To see the stats of your system resources, Type
sudo auto-cpufreq --statswhich will show the live usage of system resources. Based on the current usage it shows the CPU information along with the temperature of each core, turbo boost status, CPU Fan speed & more.
If in case you are not reaching the maximum frequencies, your CPU is capable of with auto CPU freq you can switch to performance mode which will result in higher frequencies by default but also results in higher battery consumption. In combination with auto CPU freq, you can use thermalD which uses various cooling methods to try to cool the system.
Over I would say, use Auto CPU instead of TLP on your Linux laptop, to fix the battery draining issues.
