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Comment by nextos | Hacker News Reader

I think Linux is not less efficient than other major OSes. I am able to squeeze 5% more battery from a MacBook Air 11'' Late 2012 using Linux vs macOS.

This is possible because the machine is basically a pure Intel device, so in-kernel support for most hardware components is good. The key aspect is to implement fairly aggressive udev rules and to use no desktop environment, so that the CPU stays in powersaving states for as long as possible. This is where Linux really shines, as X plus a window manager is much lighter than anything else.

There is still some room for improvement with a custom kernel, a custom Firefox build or a better wireless card, the only non-Intel component. Broadcom Linux drivers are awful. Also Safari is a marvel in terms of efficiency.

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> I am able to squeeze 5% more battery from a MacBook Air 11'' Late 2012 using Linux vs macOS.

> The key aspect is to [...] use no desktop environment, [...]

Is this satire?

No, it's not. Keep in mind in Linux, desktop environment means a big framework such as GNOME or KDE that runs on top of X or Wayland, i.e. a graphics server.

You can run bare X or Wayland, plus a window manager and cherry-picked daemons, to achieve the same sort of functionality e.g. desktop notifications, network roaming or device automounting.

My point is that bare X plus cherry-picked services tends to be much more efficient, because you don't need to pay a performance tax for the things you don't use.

Mac: Battery life sucks, let's make our own chip to make it better

Windows: Battery life sucks, we'll try to improve the software and maybe use a different CPU

Linux: Just turn off your desktop and recreate its functionality using a dozen command line daemons and selectively run graphics only when you need it. It worked in DOS, why not now?

lol and we wonder why desktop Linux never came...

I've seen a lot of Linux apologetics over the years, but this is the single funniest comment I've ever read on the topic

You're not understanding the point at all. The best Linux environments lose the complexity without losing functionality.

Sure, the setup might require some skill, but professional, high quality tools always do.

This did give me a chuckle! I think the user base is different though from the OP.

Not sure why you're being down voted when a lot of us just use X with a window manager instead of a full fat DE.

I feel like I'm watching cult members nodding at each other and wondering "why don't they get it, it's so obvious!" while everyone outside just backs away slooowly...

Me neither. Sadly, I think some users think no desktop environment means no graphics at all, or perhaps a very primitive graphical setup.

I'm an i3 elitist myself, but I think you're missing the point that not everyone wants i3

No, it’s the “fuck off”

I think a lot of this boils down to the distribution you install, what kind of background services it runs, and how effective its energy tunings are.

As an example, IMO an idle computer should have all CPU save one or two at 0% utilization, and that remaining CPU(s) shouldn't be averaging more than a few percent, in short spiky bursts. FreeBSD or Debian are like this, but Ubuntu is not.

Yes, saying that a laptop runs "Linux" does not provide any useful information when talking about battery life.

I use Gentoo on a Dell Precision laptop and I do not see any battery lifetime difference between it and Windows.

However, I do not doubt that with other Linux distributions or with a Gentoo that has a very different configuration, the results would not be the same.

I think that it is very wrong to say that a laptop with Linux has a worse battery life than one with Windows, but it is right to say that in many cases a laptop with Linux needs an experienced user to configure it properly, in order to have the same battery life that it would have with Windows out of the box.

On the other hand, when installing Windows 10 Enterprise on embedded computers, I have encountered many cases when Linux had great performance in a default installation, while with Windows 10 I had to waste many days with tuning, e.g. with discovering that certain services must be disabled, until obtaining an acceptable performance.

I, for one, appreciate your comment. Will go and check if I can squeeze something.

> and to use no desktop environment,

Why do people write comments like this as though it's reasonable way to use an everyday driver PC?

"I don't use a DE" - well then yes, obviously but you've also removed like 80% of the functionality to turn the thing into a dumb console. That's not what I want to use a computer for.

No, DE doesn't mean I have a dumb console. It just means it's a bit lighter. I have all services a modern desktop has, I still run X plus a window manager.

I imagine Xfce or even GNOME 3 can be tweaked a bit to be almost equally energy efficient.

I see no evidence that anyone has ever achieved energy efficiency and battery runtime comparable to windows or macos machines using Xfce or Gnome.

Would love to see what it would take.

> no desktop environment

> I have all services a modern desktop has

LMAO

I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo.

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> I visit this comment section for the same reason I visit a zoo.

Before making offensive comments, have you thought about the meaning of my statement?

For example, a modern DE offers desktop notifications. I still have that by running a desktop notification daemon, dunst, despite just using X plus a window manager but no DE.

Linux is very much broken into small composable components, the same way Clojure is. To take this comparison further, it is extremely ignorant to claim you can't have the same functionality Rails offers just because you don't use a big framework (which is the equivalent to a DE).

I feel like this argument would be moot if all had the same understanding of the terms they were using. People seem bit hazy on what that the term desktop environment actually describes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment

This feels like someone saying: I don’t need a car with a roof, why doesn’t everyone just drive a go kart around?

My car has a roof, it just wasn't chosen for me by someone at MS/Apple/Gnome/KDE. A custom hand-built car is not necessarily more primitive than a factory-standard one, or any less appealing.

I mean I don't have icons on desktop but that's about only miss of feature (that I don't use on windows either). Alt + F2 for app launcher + rest of it in autostart and under few bindings for common ones. If anything it's faster than anything under Windows, although definitely a power user thing.

Also something like XFCE will still get you the graphical things to fondle without as much power usage as GNOME. The problem is really those (especially GNOME) pissing on performance and thus power usage

This is not a text only console. It's how I was using UNIX workstations circa 1990. Boot to a script running startx to run X11 and a window manager (ttwm?).

What was I missing? Probably a start menu / launcher (but I guess it can be installed and run anyway) and a control panel for settings.

Which modern software won't run in such a setup? Maybe dbus? Systemd? I think a lot of GUI software would still run, some won't, daemons and servers probably would.

Is this something for the nerdiest 1% of the nerdiest 1%? Definitely. I won't do that myself because it's too much of a hassle and I'll probably have to revert to a standard DE to run some software I need for work, but it will work, mostly.

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