How to increase battery life on Ubuntu 20.04 and what power saving software should I install, if any?

Solution 1:

TLP works to save power and prevent overheating. It provides AMD Radeon GPU power management. It provides power management for CPU, GPU, WiFi, Bluetooth, HDD and more.

You can install TLP like so:

sudo apt install tlp tlp-rdw

After installation run sudo tlp start and reboot.

You will see longer battery life and reduced CPU / GPU heating after installation and reboot. However, it may take a few days to get the full effect of TLP.

TLP runs as a service. It is started from the terminal and it has no GUI.

After you install TLP, you run it for the first time using this command in the terminal:

sudo tlp start

Then you do not need to run it again. It will run automatically with each reboot.

You can check the status of the TLP service by running the following command in the terminal:

sudo systemctl status tlp.service

You will get an output like this:

● tlp.service - TLP system startup/shutdown
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/tlp.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (exited) since Tue 2019-08-27 23:06:37 +03; 3 days ago
     Docs: https://linrunner.de/tlp
 Main PID: 2374 (code=exited, status=0)
    Tasks: 0
   Memory: 0B
   CGroup: /system.slice/tlp.service

enabled means it will run automatically every time the system starts.

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To see TLP's extended status information, please run the following command in the terminal:

sudo tlp-stat

Please read more about TLP here.

Other proven effecctive ways that could be done together with TLP are:

• Disable the discrete GPU and use the onboard / integrated GPU. This might reduce the graphics performance but will save power. Please pay attention that if you decide to disable the discrete GPU, you might run into video drivers issues so be careful with this one.

• Follow the Use less power and improve battery life in the official Ubuntu documentation.