Better battery life with the latest linux kernel

I’m running Ubuntu 22.04 and with the default kernel (version 5.15) I was unable to go below 4-5W (measured with powertop), even if I turned off everything (screen at minimum, no Wifi/Bluetooth, and services stopped, such as docker).

I have installed the latest version of the kernel, version 6.0.7 and it makes a very noticeable difference: now when everything is turned off, I can reach 2.5W.

When I turn on everything and set the screen at a normal brightness (although without running applications), the power consumption is around 4.5W when idling, which is much better than before. Now I can see that the battery doesn’t drop as fast as before.

11 Likes

Nice! How long is your battery life now, and is that on 11th or 12th gen?

1 Like

My configuration is (not the best optimized for battery life):

  • Intel 12th gen 1240p
  • 2x16GB corsair
  • Samsung 980 1TB

After one hour of my normal developer work with many running applications (Docker, PHPStorm, Chrome, DBeaver, slack, Google meet video, …), the battery decreased by 18%.

So, a full charged battery would last around 5h30, which is quite decent, considering that battery life is one of the top weaknesses of the framework laptop.

4 Likes

Whole reason why I always use the most recent kernel and keep LTS in case something breaks.
I’m constantly monitoring power usage with a power monitor widget, with a browser open, email client and signal running, while also listening to music, I’m seeing 6-8W used at most.

Future Kernel versions are getting some patches for better power usage on battery for 12th and 13th gen, and some work done by google engineer to improve battery life with light use. Hopefully these will merge in 6.2.

1 Like

Thanks for sharing!

I got my framework a couple of weeks ago, and my standby life has been actually better than expected. I closed my laptop without powering off about 35 hours ago, and the battery has went from 69% to 43%. That’s perfectly acceptable to me and actually is better than I expected, considering all of the bad standby time comments i’ve seen online.

Also running the latest Ubuntu

Curious. I’m running Manjaro on an 11th gen. My power usage under normal use (browser, electon, email client, and pcloud) with kernel 5.15 was about 2-3W, but under kernel 6.06 is closer to 5-6W.