I'm dual booting Fedora 42 with GNOME and Windows 11 on my Huawei Matebook D15, which has an AMD Ryzen 5500U and integrated GPU. I've noticed that on Windows 11, I get about 5 to 6 hours of battery life, but on Fedora, it drops to only 2 to 3 hours. I've tried installing TLP and using Corectrl to set the CPU to power-saving mode, but neither seemed to help. Does anyone have suggestions for improving battery life on Fedora?
2 Answers
This battery issue is pretty common. Your laptop's firmware is likely optimized for Windows, which means it might not be as efficient on Fedora. I suggest using PowerTOP to monitor and fine-tune your setup. Also, check if hardware video acceleration is enabled and set the power-profiles-daemon to use the power-saver profile. Fedora might also lack some proprietary codecs, so installing those could help too.
That's such a bummer! I really want to switch to Fedora, but with battery issues, I just can't make myself do it.
I tried both Fedora and CachyOS, but my battery life was much better on Manjaro. I didn't really alter any power settings much, and I'm not sure why it performed better. You could give Manjaro a shot and see if you notice an improvement. For me, it actually outperformed Windows in terms of battery life!
Which desktop environment did you use on Manjaro?
I doubt that. Linux usually has access to the same hardware-level capabilities as Windows. It's probably just missing some drivers for your specific hardware.