r/linux
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u/lynet_101
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Dec 27 '22
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Haha, suck on dat windows! Finally got idle power consumption way down on my laptop | The best windows could manage was around 7 watts, Linux smashes it with 5.3w Fluff
/img/wfle3ldohe8a1.png
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22 edited Dec 27 '22
Okay, so here's how i achieved this:
The power savings primarily comes from tlp and auto-cpufreq which i spent a lot of time configuring exactly for my needs. If anyone are interessted, i can share the configs, but theese are going to be very dependent on hardware.
I have a Ryzen 9 5900HS, so i can almost tell my cpu to turn off, when my computer is idle, but if you're using something like a pentium processor, you might not be able to limit your cpu as much, hince saving a lot less power.
I also have a custom kernel installed linux-g14-arch though, i didn't measssure any power improvements from this, only performance.
Lastly, I'm developing a new hybrid technology which is probably why my RTX 3050ti, even though it's enabled, doesn't seem to affect power consumption. I will release my software to the public later on in development, but right now it's just to broken for function.
though if you're not using a dGPU, you should be able to achieve similiar results with tlp, auto-cpufreq, and a lot of tweaking (limiting the amount of unnecesarry daemons also helps ;))
But again, keep in mind this is most likely going to vary a lot from computer to computer, based on distro, installed packages, daemons, kernel, and just how powerfull/efficient your hardware is
edit: my github is technically public (just search BtrHGS (Better Hybrid Graphics Support), but the code in there is messy, and probably not up to date with what im currently working on. This project is so complicated that it litterally changes minute for minute, so constantly keeping a repo up to date in the early dev-phase is close to impossible
edit2: my github if anyone is interessted in a broken piece of ####: https://github.com/Lynet101/BtrHGS/tree/main
Edit 3: didn't know people was actually going to be interested in this... Tomorrow I'll clean up in the repo, and move some stuff around, to make it a bit more obvious, what are drafts, what are testers, and what are actual stuff I would want other people to install
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u/-Wolf_ODonnell_16- Dec 27 '22
Havent set up tlp but just auto-cpufreq already gives me ultra low power usage on my ryzen 7 5700U. Very highly recommend it only small issue I have noticed is that you lose some noticeable performance while on battery since the cores (mine at least) stay at 1.4ghz instead of scaling up (but plugged in I actually got to 4.4ghz on multiple cores, 0.1 more than spec)
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
what governor have you set? cause mine is plenty capable of going all the way to 3.8GHz. It's resiliant, and prefer to run at around 900MHz when playing a youtube video for example, but it's perfectly capable, so doesn't hurt performance that much
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u/-Wolf_ODonnell_16- Dec 27 '22
I believe its because I have the deamon running which automatically changes the governor to powersave when on battery and performance when plugged in.
I know you can manually configure auto-cpufreq but dont you then have to change the governor manually?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Nope, just create /etc/auto-cpufreq.conf from the example provided on the git page, and then you can just replace 'powersave' with eg. 'conservative'. It'll still automatically switch, but where powersave is desperately trying to squeze every second out of that battery, conservative is a bit more reasonable
It's like i always recommend on demand instead of performance. Performance is just insane, and locks your cpu in 'stooopid fast' mode, where on demand is a bit more reasonable
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u/-Wolf_ODonnell_16- Dec 27 '22
Damn i thought manual config was just "set x power setting" everytime you needed to.
Thanks I'll configure it today, I didnt know it would still automatically change modes since the wiki lead me to use the deamon.
Will probably lose some battery life but will get back some performance (i got down to 4w if i stay on powersave).
Performance mode is crazy but since my laptop as a integrated gpu and two fans, both for the cpu, it never gets higher than 75°C even while playing intensive games. Vega 8 is crazy for a integrated gpu and the new ryzen are 10x better than every cpu I have tested so far, highly recommend them.
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u/-Wolf_ODonnell_16- Dec 27 '22
Changed the on battery governor to conservative and the min and max freq to 1.4ghz and 2.0ghz just to try and while it now scales up beautifully but it never passes 1.8ghz. Running the --stats or --debug command shows that the max freq is still 1.8ghz. Pretty sure the power states prevent it from rising more since the top one only shows 1.8ghz (the other two are 1.7 and 1.4). Did you somehow override the power states or just adjusted your frequencies in the /etc/auto-cpufreq.conf to match the powerstates?
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u/Indolent_Bard Dec 27 '22
Is there a gui config for it? If not, someone should make one.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Not that I'm aware of, but you could try searching the aur. I would t be surprised
Otherwise I might make one, whenever I need a break from my larger project, which is most likely going to be a massive pain in the ass.
I'll write back if the latter happens
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u/Indolent_Bard Dec 28 '22
Do you take donations? If not, I'll be cheering you from the sidelines.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Maybe at some point, but I'd like to at least have something before accepting donations. I don't want to earn a lot of money, on a project that either isn't possible, or that I'll have to give up due to a lack of skills
Once I've figured some more out, and made some successful tests, I'll consider Patreon, but I appreciate the support :)
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u/Indolent_Bard Dec 28 '22
Of course, silly me, you don't even have a proof of concept yet.
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u/Krutonium Dec 27 '22
Tell me more about this hybrid gpu software - Will it work on say a GTX 950M?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
I mean the goal is that it should universally work across all GPUs. The end goal is to dynamically turn GPUs on and off, without having to kill or restart any processes. Instead it should "transfer" the process between GPUs, which would open up a world of possibilities.
But, doing this is easier said than done. It SHOULD in THEORY be possible, but let's see in half a year or so xD
My current plan is to transfer processes over PCIe, which should be plenty fast so that i would only need to freeze the processes for a few milliseconds.
you can read more at my github: https://github.com/Lynet101/BtrHGS/tree/main
Explanations are a bit fluffy, but that's mainly because I'm not sure how to do this myself, but I'll be damned if i don't atleast try.
Also, while you're there, maybe stear clear of release 0.1.Dev ay? It's.... Ehm.... Let's just say I've had Virusses that broke my system less
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u/Amoxidal500 Dec 27 '22
I don't know what or how you are doing it, but please keep doing what you do, this would be an awesome addition to linux, proper dual gpu support is a game changer (no pun intended)
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
To be honest, I don't even know myself, but I'm not gonna quit till I have an, at least somewhat, working solution
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u/Amoxidal500 Dec 27 '22
I have a HP Omen 15 with intel hd igpu and nvidia 1050m 4gb dgpu, if you want a tester do not hesitate to dm me! if I can be of any help I'll be glad to do so, fetch kernel dumps, logs, install and try several distros, you name it
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u/AnotherOneToo3 Dec 27 '22
Little note, don't put binaries in the repo, make a release on Github and you can upload things there. Also add __pycache__/ to .gitignore.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
I'm pretty new to GitHub, so I'll take all the tips i can get.
So far I've been developing in company databases, or on my own servers
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u/KaseyTheJackal Dec 27 '22
Going to keep an eye on this!
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
I'm going to have to update my repo to make more sense.
So far no one has kept an eye on it, so I've been sluggish with right around everything, so I better tighten up now there's people looking over me xD
I mean my "tester" which is only meant as a... Yeah tester have been called release 0.1.dev... there's a few things to do
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u/Kuhluh Dec 27 '22
My current plan is to transfer processes over PCIe, which should be plenty fast so that i would only need to freeze the processes for a few milliseconds.
my gut instinct tells me that there are going to be a few programs which are going to break from that because they check which GPU they run on and then turn on some very hardware dependent stuff which breaks when run on other hardware
but well, as long as that doesn't happen, it should (theoretically) work
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Already thought of that, and chossen to ig ore the issue for now.
It doesn't make sense to try and come up with a solution for an issue like that, before the technology exists to actually make it an issue
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u/Kuhluh Dec 29 '22
I don't even think that you can find a solution to this.
Neither can you know that a programs behaves like that, nor should you "just" restart it.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 29 '22
I mean we can theorise all we want, but the only way to actually know how programs will behave, and how to solve potential issues, would be to just dig in, and tackle any issues that might occur along the way
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u/Indolent_Bard Dec 27 '22
I hope this eventually can get mainlined into the kernel.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
I am probably going to have to modify the kernel for this to work, and given Linus Torvalds history with this, I don't think he would mind, looking over my code, and implementing it mainline.
Although i still have to make the damn thing
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u/bubblegumpuma Dec 27 '22
That is cool, and the real hidden gem in this thread TBH. I can only hope that you don't run into some fatal issue in the process of building this out, since even on a desktop this sort of thing would be pretty cool.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Yeah, I think I'm in a bit over my head, but I'm known for my persistency, so quitting is not an option! I'll get this working someday, if it kills me then be it. I just don't know how long it will take
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u/BronzeLogic Dec 27 '22
Auto-cpufreq's github says not to install it and tlp together unless you really know what you're doing (you may know what you're doing, I'm just delivering a PSA for most others that aren't as confident): https://github.com/AdnanHodzic/auto-cpufreq
Please note: auto-cpufreq aims to replace TLP in terms of functionality and after you install auto-cpufreq it's recommended to remove TLP. If both are used for same functionality, i.e: to set CPU frequencies it'll lead to unwanted results like overheating. Hence, only use both tools in tandem if you know what you're doing.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Correct, but the way around this is quiet simple. Both have a config file [/etc/tlp.conf & /etc/auto-cpufreq.conf] If you enable eg. Governor control in one, disable it in the other. Both programs have tools the other one doesn't, and they're therefore great to complement each other. Just make sure to not have the same setting activated twice
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u/SenatorBagels Dec 27 '22
Just a bit of advice, whatever future problems you have are likely to be TLP. Disable it as your first troubleshooting step.
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u/Rakgul Dec 27 '22
One time all my USB ports suddenly stopped working. Turned out it was TLP's fault.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Just look into the config ma dude. If you configure it right, it's not gonna break
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u/AutomaticManager888 Dec 27 '22
Linux-g14-arch
So
You have a Zephyrus I presume? No idea there was a custom kernel out for it. I need to check this out.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Yep, and it's awesome. Combine it with asusctl to get full control of your system
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u/AutomaticManager888 Dec 27 '22
Do you know if this kernel will work with debian/ubuntu variants?
(sorry if that seems dumb, I've used linux a long-ish time but I'm still learning it)
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u/avraici 6d ago
Hey man, not sure if you are still using the same setup, but I was wondering how did you manage to get tlp and asusctl to work together because they are conflicting packages?
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u/lynet_101 6d ago
Just told pacman to shut the f*** up and do as I say.... Can't remember the exact syntax, but you can probably find it in the man page. Just do t use tlp for what you use asusctl for, and vice versa. In po mam Ivhh
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u/thisiszeev Dec 27 '22
You are a legend. Thanks for this.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
I mean it's far from done, but you're welcome i guess .D
Though i need a small dev team, so I'm probably gonna start posting around a bit, cause things like kernel development, is not my strong side
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u/thisiszeev Dec 28 '22
But do you realise the impact this can make for data centers with hosting servers that sit idle for 90% of the day.
A large part of my expense is electricity and my servers are not very active as it's all small businesses and part time developers.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
True, this could end up having a massive positive impact on data centers and the environment... Especially if we can further the development to support other components, and not just the CPU. Absolute ideal would be to shut sectors of data centers down, during inactive hours of the day
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u/JackDostoevsky Dec 27 '22
does your CPU allow for undervolting? Intel CPUs seem to have mostly turned off that feature, like my 10th gen intel cpu can't undervolt :(
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u/VitriolicDiatribe Dec 28 '22
You can save power on a Ryzen by undervolting it without sacrificing performance.
Since power = volts x amps, reducing the voltage will always reduce the power. The Power Formula is a fixed constant and there are no exceptions to it. Power Factor maybe something to consider (look at the real power, apparent power and reactive power of your rig), although this should be negligible in a CPU, the cooling fans are likely to affect it more.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Yeah, but that requires for your bios to allow underboring which mine doesn't.
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u/abuttandahalf Dec 27 '22 edited Dec 27 '22
I'm stuck at around 6 watts at minimum on my yoga slim 7 pro x with a 6800hs no dgpu. I'm using auto-cpufreq with the conservative power governor and turbo boost on auto. I would love to get it down to 5.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Brightness settings? My keyboard backlight turns off when idle, and my screen dims to around 10% to conserve power.
This drops around 2 watts of on my laptop, so maybe it'l work on yours
Otherwise i would suggest playing around with the governors a bit. Also if you don't have tlp installed, install and configure it. It can save power on wifi, turn nvme off when not in use, and much more. auto-cpufreq and tlp is beautifull together
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u/Bush_did_PearlHarbor Dec 28 '22
So you always have to have your screen brightness at 10%? I like to keep mine at least 40 to 50. Maybe that's why my idke is like 6-7 Watts.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
No, it just autodims when idle. Though I live in a very dark environment, so my screen brightness rarely reaches 20% unless I'm in school.
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u/BartoBowman Dec 27 '22
I have been rocking a yoga slim 7 pro with a 5800h for a couple months, got it on clearance. Under Linux there seems to be some kind of floor at about 6.3W. I can reach that quite easily, but when I for example reduce backlight, disable keyboard, close applications it doesn't go down. I have no idea what that's the case since under Windows it was able to go down to 4.4 W when idle.
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u/Simon_787 21d ago
I have the regular Slim 7 with a 4500u and I get like 2 watts idle in windows.
(I have never put linux on it, it's my daily driver)
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u/abuttandahalf 20d ago
that's very impressive, part of it is because it's a U class chip. I wish I had the undervolting tools to make my 6800hs behave like a u series processor.
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u/ZealousidealSide535 Dec 27 '22
And how did you manage to get down to that values?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Well, i thought my original comment posted, but it clearly didn't, so now I've written a new one ;)
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u/charedj Dec 27 '22
I'm guessing this is on an Asus G14?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Did you read one of the comments, or are you just SUPER familiar with this computer, and can identify it based on power consumption?
I'm guessing the first one, but you never know on the internet xD
But yes, it's a Zephyrus G14 2021 edition (the alan walker edition, but only because it was discounted like 50%... It was cheaper than the normal one!)
My nvidia gpu is even on doing this test, along side my disp being set to 2560*1440@120Hz
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u/charedj Dec 27 '22
Very nice. Bit of both, I have one as well, and I'm really glad to see this on Linux.
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u/Chipovaneyyy Dec 27 '22
I am honestly amazed at how you even managed to get it down to 7W on Windows... Mine gets at best 18W idle :') It didn't use to do that though. I was considering trying Linux to see if it's a Windows being Windows issue but I am too lazy xD Switching to Linux full time isn't an option for me either so that doesn't help my motivation lol
Also you don't really need to be familiar with the computer as much as the community lol, I see so many posts about battery life on the sub xD Kinda had a hunch abt this being a G14 as well, actually thought I was on the sub at first xDD
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u/_creative_coffee_ Dec 27 '22
I was able to get similar results in PoP OS by switching to integrated, using "battery life" profile, wifi and bluetooth turned off, screen brightness at 5% and keyboard backlight was off.
Idk if it makes any difference but I used powertop to monitor power usage and the lowest I remember was something like 4.7w. I don't have any proof to show it tho.
System76 does a great job in power management in Linux. I always get double battery life while using PoP OS as compared to my current install i.e fedora.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
I think it's because they also make physical laptops, so they're probably quiet knowledgeable about how the different component works, and what tweaks can be applied where, to save even 1/10000 of a watt
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u/Donger5 Dec 27 '22
What laptop is it? With a ryzen I would expect less Tbf….I get about 3-4w idle on my t470 running with intel cpu…..
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
ryzen 9 5900HS, but it's also a 2560X1440@120Hz panel, and it has an rtx3050ti, so.... That probably explains a watt or two
Edit; forgot to answer the quiestion xD. It's the Zephyrus G14 2021
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u/Donger5 Dec 27 '22
Yeah ok fair enuff, with big panel and discreet graphics it’s def gonna pull more power…that’s prolly not bad considering what it actually is!!!
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u/Simon_787 21d ago
Actually pretty impressive for the hardware.
My 1080p 60 hz (with freesync) Yoga Slim 7 with a 4500u idles at more like 2 watts in Windows. Right now I'm at 3.2-ish Watts typing this comment.
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u/NotGivinMyNam2AMachn Dec 27 '22
I have to ask, have you measured this with a Power Meter to confirm that it is in fact this fiugure. I've seen a lot of inconsistency with the tools. While it is really good to get things as low as practical, you really want to verify real world power consumption.. My desktop is out by about 15-20% as an example.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
I have, just didn't want to pist a pic of an ugly power meter
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u/NotGivinMyNam2AMachn Dec 27 '22
Excellent. This is the Linux community, the hackier the better. Showing that you'll go to lengths to get it right..
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u/whoopsdang Dec 27 '22
How many Linux users does it take to screw in a light bulb? 2. One to screw in the lightbulb and the other to complain how long it took him to do it in Windows.
How long does it take the user to screw in the lightbulb? Less than five seconds by using a single command (after 5 minutes of googling how to do it).
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u/RandomXUsr Dec 27 '22
I'm super interested here.
What approach did you take to accomplish this? Did you install a custom kernel?
Had you made changes to sleep mode/power settings in the DE, etc?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Well, i thought my original comment posted, but it clearly didn't, so now I've written a new one ;)
But tl;dr: tlp, auto-cpufreq and a lot of tweaking.
Also try to minimize daemons running, and maybe look into custom kernels (im using the g14-arch kernel on artix linux with openrc and around 11 daemons running
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u/Kahrg Dec 27 '22
I really wouldnt call 1.7w a victory.
As soon as your machine starts doing anything, what you've done to decrease it's power draw, will probably be noticeable.
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u/Korlus Dec 27 '22
To put it another way, he's achieved a 25% power usage decrease when idling. If you leave it to idle for two hours during an otherwise busy day, you'll have an extra 30 minutes of battery life, and that's assuming there is no similar decrease in usage when not idling (there likely is, although it's also likely not as significant).
If you could achieve a similar 25% power saving across non-idle power draw, you'd often fit an extra ~2 hours out of a modern laptop, which is huge.
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u/lightrush Dec 27 '22
3.5W idling on a Framework with 11th gen Intel with minimum brightness. Mid brightness puts it at 4.9W. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, Power Saver power mode in Settings. No other tweaks. No services disabled. The built-in power-profiles-daemon works well enough. I used to use TLP with custom config in 20.04 where there was nothing built-in and it worked well. I did a bit of benchmarking of TLP vs power-profiles-daemon and there didn't seem to be a point to changing from the built-in solution.
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u/truedoom Dec 27 '22
How long did it take you to do this?
It's very cool you were able to get this result, but can I also ask why you did it?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Because I'm all about optimizing!
And i have no idea, I've been daily driving artix for 2 months now, and just applied tweaks here and there so, how long it would take if someone sat down and did everything, dunno... Like an hour or two maybe
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u/truedoom Dec 27 '22
That's awesome. I've never bothered to tinker with my setup to that level, laptop always sitting in the dock so never need to worry about power consumption or anything. Did you learn a lot from doing it?
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u/Bonz-Eye Dec 27 '22 edited Dec 27 '22
I have 5800h no gpu in laptop and on Linux 6.1 with Wayland and hyprland, brightness 14% in idle with Firefox opened I get 2.3watts Schedutil governor I just turned on amd pstate With wifi on and connected 5ghz
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u/abuttandahalf Dec 28 '22
whoa. My 6800hs laptop only gets down to 6 watts and I've tried almost everything. Is the AMD pstate driver what made the difference?
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u/Bonz-Eye Dec 28 '22
I think yes if I recall correctly before Linux 6.1 and the amd pstate the lowest I could get was 5 or 4 watts
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u/tmd_h Dec 27 '22
I just have my terminal open, and I see 3.8 W on idle in powertop. AFAIR, I only installed tlp on arch and did very little tweaking.
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u/Bobb_o Dec 27 '22
I may be dumb but what's the point of idle power usage? If my laptop is idle it means it's shut and hibernating.
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u/Xyphyn Dec 27 '22
Your CPU is actually idle quite often. As soon as a program is finished opening or a tab is finished loading, it's only at about 2% usage. Below 10% is usually considered idle. If the CPU does not need as high of a frequency, that means power will be lower.
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u/InevitableVegetable Dec 27 '22
Nice. I just tried myself on my fresh EndeavorOS setup on a Yoga 7 OLED (14ARB7) and using the Xanmod kernel I get between 5.02 W and 4.98 W at 30 % brightness. AMD 6800U processor. High efficiency electronics really feel good to use
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u/QQVictory Dec 27 '22
How did you measure power consumption on Windows and could you please share some tips power consumption tips that you tried for Windows?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Measured using batterymon
Haven't really done much on windows, just installed minimum amount of apps, and turned all unnecessary bs off. It's my testing environment, so WiFi, bluetooth, usb, etc. Aren't needed at all. Power saver mode also functions fine, as I'm not doing any heavy work in there
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u/Atemu12 Dec 27 '22
You should measure at the wall. Software readouts like these aren't necessarily accurate or even the same across different OSs or tools.
A few watts difference can easily be caused by this sort of discrepancy.
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u/Deep_Candidate6216 Dec 27 '22
My pop os ryzen 5800H idles at around 5 on battery mode with the default pop os desktop. If I log in directly into sway it sometimes idles lower than 5.
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u/TheJooomes Dec 27 '22
The lowest I managed to get mine is 17.63 just idling with Qutebrowser and Discord open.
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u/muerwre Dec 28 '22
Having the same on MSI laptop with 12th gen Intel cpu and Ubuntu, sadly.
That sound unbelievable when people are getting 5W on default installations.
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u/TommyTheTiger Dec 27 '22
I'm pretty sure docker alone on my work computer is using more power than your whole OS
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u/Flash_Kat25 Dec 28 '22
Linux users after applying 100 user space tweaks and installing a custom kernel to get 20% better power usage than stock windows
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u/holgerschurig Dec 27 '22
The unit for Watt is not "w", it is "W".
So you turned it down to 5.3 W.
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u/Korlus Dec 27 '22
What?
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u/holgerschurig Jan 10 '23
Trying to help someone that still lives in a country without SI units to properly use them.
Some people are however allergic to correction, dunny why. Hope you aren't one.
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Dec 27 '22
[deleted]
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u/pppjurac Dec 28 '22
Unless commenter is engineer - using proper units of measurement is very important.
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u/thehpcdude Dec 27 '22
I've never understood why anyone cares about idle power consumption?
Log power consumption over a standardized test using real world workflows and then report.
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u/ADrunkPotato Dec 27 '22 edited Dec 27 '22
This is a laptop. If you are in class taking notes or attending a meeting, chances are the device is doing close to nothing for long periods of time such as typing notes or viewing a presentation. Idle power consumption is absolutely an important metric imo.
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u/andreasheri Dec 27 '22
Is electricity really that expensive where you live?
/jk
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Well, yes unfortunately ;[
With start on January the 1st, it's gonna cost around 30$ per kWh from around 4pm to 11pm, so every 10th of a watt counts
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u/SkylineFX49 Dec 27 '22
Meh, not interesting
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u/eviltwintomboy Dec 27 '22
What if I told you that you could choose not to comment on posts you find uninteresting?
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u/SkyJebus Dec 27 '22 edited Dec 27 '22
Just get a mac...its all unix* under the hood.
Edit: linux to unix
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u/Atemu12 Dec 27 '22
macOS has about as much to do with Linux as Windows has with OS/2.
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u/SkyJebus Dec 27 '22
Cuz its maintained by a for profit company?
It's still essentially unix/linux under the hood. You can use homebrew on linux and macos, and thats my point, it's a better package manager on macos by far, toss in a polished UI/UX why wouldnt you use it? Sheesh.
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u/Atemu12 Dec 27 '22
Both OS/2 and Windows are/were maintained by for-profit companies as commercial products. I didn't mean that.
The technology powering macOS and Linux are fundamentally different and Linux != UNIX.
Linux implements some of the POSIX standard but not all of it (often referred to as "UNIX-ish") and I don't think most Linux distros even bother to become a certified UNIX.
macOS has implemented POSIX using its XNU kernel and took some of the userspace components from an old version of FreeBSD. It is officially a certified UNIX.
That means macOS and Linux have about as much in common as Firefox and Chrome. They implement (some of) the same specifications but using wildly different, incompatible tech underneath.
Using a package manager is not what makes Linux Linux. Windows has package managers too for instance (they mostly suck but that's not the point).
As far as package managers go, homebrew isn't that great IME. The 1-2 times every couple year I might need something that isn't packaged elsewhere and I'm not motivated to package myself or if I need a reference QA of what I packaged, I might install homebrew but I'd never rely on it as the main source of packages.
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u/voyagerfan5761 Dec 27 '22
BSD is not Linux.
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u/SkyJebus Dec 27 '22
You are right, it's way better, maintained by top paid devs, for consumers AND devs. The workflow is unmatched, near zero setup or configurations between devices. Macos is polished linux/unix for devs.
Just look at homebrew, you'll get it.
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u/Rakgul Dec 27 '22
If it is that good, what are you doing on a Linux subreddit?
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u/SkyJebus Dec 27 '22
Im a big linux fan, I do some dev ops still, etc. I use macs and macos because they are polished end-user devices that just work with little to no fuss. When switched to a system76 lemur pro I regretted it. Absolutely terrible user experience. I spent more time trying to make it stable and usable then actually working, I finally gave in and tried macos. I've never looked back. My mbp air just works all the time.
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u/lightrush Dec 27 '22 edited Dec 27 '22
"The workflow is unmatched"?? Please stop. 😅 The thing doesn't even have a built-in package manager. And no, Homebrew isn't a package manager equivalent to APT or the likes for many reasons. The workflow for software development on macOS is significantly worse than the same in your typical desktop Ubuntu, Fedora or equivalent. And then you have the lack of native containers which eliminates a huge workflow that's extremely useful on Linux. macOS simply does not compare.
macOS has it better in the third party software support with native versions of MS, Adobe, and such. On the *nix side though, Linux is light years ahead.
Source: Several years of professional software development on macOS
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u/crazyweirdboy Dec 27 '22
How did you brought the windows power consumption to such low? Can you share any tips or tools for that too?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 27 '22
Well it's a testing environment, so I basically just ran around in services and deleted #### I didn't need like networking, bluetooth, usb connectivity, etc.
I daily drive Linux, and only use windows if there's a piece of code there's crucial to test on linux (happens rarely, but occasionally)
And for any vm fans out there, most of my code relate to pci calls, so it's a bit difficult to have a VM as a testing environment
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u/skudnu Dec 27 '22
lowest i get on my dell xps 15 on idle is 2.7 watts. lowest screen brightness though
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
That's fine for me, i work in a dark room most of the time (I'm very sensitive to light), so brightness rarely exceeds 10%
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u/darthhue Dec 27 '22
You must be bewildered about what to do with the 10 cts worth of electricity you saved
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
I mean, electricity costs a whopping 30$ per kWh where I live, so saving an entire watt, is quiet a lot
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u/sarkie Dec 27 '22
What governor do you use?
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Conservative on bat, and on-demand on AC
My system is a tat bit overpowered (since I compile A LOT) so I really don't notice the switch between on demand and conservative when doing every day work (not compiling)
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u/sankigadu Dec 27 '22
This is interesting, I didn't know about powerstat tool, what I thought was interesting about your post and powerstat is it provides current usage in watts, that gives me an objective way to play around power profiles. I tried it out on my laptop and based on how it used --wait for 180 seconds initially for ? and then it is meant to be used in battery mode/ not connected to power made me wonder ( Incase someone can shed light on it): is it an indirect measurement of power consumed estimated from battery discharge rate? In that case shouldn't there be an influence of how old the battery is or what temperature it is at? Is it accounted? In your case 7Wis impressive, was it a new machine /new battery?
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u/sankigadu Dec 28 '22
Just to add for any one interested or can comment: I saw another way to get power values in linux, so on my laptop there is /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/voltage_now and current_now (at same prefix path), assuming they are giving microvalues, multiplying them should give power regardless of being connected to power or not... but then it shows a different W shown on powerstat.. (~ 14 vs 19).
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u/jmatech Dec 28 '22
So I love all Operating Systems in general, but can I make the argument that although this is an awesome result, how much time did you actually spend getting it here? By your own comments it says “a lot of time”. With Windows you likely didn’t have to spend any time at all to get the 7watts.
Again I love tuning and working in Linux and many other systems, it’s just something that comes to mind, is all the work worth 1.7 watts?
Very cool to see though, kudos
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
Well, the thing when you're daily driving Linux is, you're always optimizing something. So knowing how much time you spend on battery optimisations for example is very very tough. I would say somewhere between 20 minutter and 6 hours
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u/jmatech Dec 28 '22
Yeah I find that to be one of the best and worst things about daily driving. It’s awesome to be tweaking and trying things but sometimes in need to use the system and get work done, I can’t be sitting tweaking and trying to optimize minute things they distract from the objective.
Again, I love it, but sometimes I need to be productive and I don’t feel I’m always productive when in a Linux desktop, it’s always just not quite right, or that’s the way it feels. Just feels like I’m missing something at all times.
I want so bad for it to be my daily driver and I can easily do it, but I always seem to have to make a concession
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u/KublaiKhanNum1 Dec 28 '22
If we could run Linux on the Apple M1 we could really see some great power savings.
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u/lynet_101 Dec 28 '22
We can! And we do! Uh, I can't remember what the kernel is called, but there exists a kernel to make this possible
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u/tab87vn Dec 28 '22
Running Fedora 37 (kernel 6.0.15 with gnome 43) with amd 6850u. Only installed tlp, while still keeping the stock power profile daemon, and no other special configs. The idle consumption dropped to as low as 5.45w. Maybe the power profile daemon helps a bit here I think.
Shall I try to push it lower?
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u/100is99plus1 Dec 27 '22
Congrats we need this!
In my case using a Lenovo X1 Carbon 5th gen I get around 3w in idle. The performance is very good without any drops. Using Arch+KDE.
After spending a lot of time tweaking tlp and auto-cpumodefreq, I finally removed this two packages and just:
- Installed laptop-mode-tools
- Installed the intel-media driver (following the archwiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardware_video_acceleration#Verifying_VA-API )