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Comment by yaantc | Hacker News Reader

> Linux also tends to be quite a bit worse for battery life than Windows.

With a manual stock distro installation maybe, as the defaults are very conservative. But just install the "tlp" package (the laptop project) and the situation flips. At least that's my experience at work based on Dell Latitude laptops and Thinkpads T before. My battery life is way above my Windows using colleagues, and my fans are mostly off (unless big compilation or test runs) instead of mostly on. Of course it's very likely due to the anti-virus, but that's part of the corporate Windows experience nowadays.

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Currently f/t linux user, been using it on and off on multiple laptops for 2 decades. Not once, regardless of tlp and other tweaks and many hours of twiddling and forum-reading and keeping stats for weeks on end, has Linux ever approached Windows' battery life on the same machine. I don't know how to relate that to your experience, other than to say that (1) I'm closer to comparing like with like (same user, same machine) and (2) every other linux user I've personally known has found the same as me.

Given the appalling and deteriorating state of desktop OS's, it seems unlikely I'll ever use anything other than Linux again. But I don't believe it will ever catch up with either Windows or MacOS on battery life. I just accept that as something I"ll have to live with.

I concur. On my Thinkpad T14 gen2, I have accepted I maybe get 3h of battery on a good day.

The battery is half the size of the lastest MacBook sure. But much less than half the battery life.

I don't have suspend issues. I am probably lucky.

I wouldn't code on anything else than Linux. But I got myself to enjoy CAD work on my gaming computer running windows. Not that windows is great. It's horrible. But because on windows the GPU and mouse acceleration works flawlessly and feels like an extension of my mind. On Linux somehow it is not as smooth. Mac feels sluggish too. As if there is some lag? But moving the mouse on windows feels just right (and yes I tried same hardware on windows / Linux).

I hate macos. It's buggy and slow. The touchpad is stupidly big. But precision is fantastic. It's an insult to everybody else really. Thinkpad touchpad is an insult of insult. People designing that crap should go to jail for the amount of time they waste on humanity.

Quite. Much does come down to your patterns of use. I'm plugged in about 80% of the time, so while I'd love more battery time it's not a primary concern. I barely use the trackpad. I don't game. Linux is still top notch for software development. But I don't think an ideological insistence that it's better on every dimension than every other OS is either convincing or helpful.

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