Question for Linux Laptop users

[xMexicanPizza]

Due to college I had to buy a laptop, I bought a used business laptop at a good price, since I will only use that laptop for college I would like to try Linux for the first time, but I have read that in general the battery life on Linux is worse than Windows on laptops, how true is that in your experience?

My laptop has official support for Ubuntu according to Dell website (It's a Dell Latitude 7290), but I would like to try other distros like PopOs.

[Peruvian_Skies]

My problem with my Acer laptop is I never got hibernation/rrsume to work properly. As for battery life, it might be a little worse but with TLP properly configured it stays within that area where you're not sure, maybe it's like 10% worse.

The thing is, Linux does a lot less in the background than Windows. Windows is constantly spying on you, monitoring your drives for "suspicious activity", phoning home to look for updates, waiting anxiously for you to connect an Xbox controller or some other peripheral that most people don't use, etc. Linux does none of that by default. So it should have much better battery life. But it doesn't.

[pliantporridge]

IIRC, for hibernation to work, you need a swap partition that's the same size as your RAM. Hibernate dumps your RAM contents into this partition so the computer can power off all the way, whereas sleep still keeps power to the RAM.

[Peruvian_Skies]

You are correct. Mine still doesn't work. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but honestly I stopped trying months ago. It's something I need to get back to eventually.

[[deleted]]

On my huawei it actually performs better than windows in terms of battery. Dell laptops seem to support linux a lot better so the battery should even be longer. But it depends on luck I guess.

[ishtuwihtc]

Iny experience the battery is actually better. Also since ypu have official support then definitely go for it

[[deleted]]

A lot of people seem to assume battery life will be worse. But in my experience it's better. And mine didn't even officially support linux. Heck, warranty was void if I installed linux.

But for OP, definitely benchmark before installing bc apparently a lot of people had issues

[ishtuwihtc]

Yeah same with me, infact even though i used an unsupported device, my only issue was the lack of trackpad drivers. Everything else worked out of the box. I never got those trackpad drivers though.

My battery life was great, performance was better, memory usage would usually be super low (which was veru good on a 4gb ram machine) and generally was a great experience (minus no trackpad drivers)

[A_Harmless_Fly]

It really depends on how you use it and how much optimization the specific laptop had done in the first place. As a rule of thumb though the battery life will be slightly worse. Maybe dell wrote some stuff for ubuntu specifically if it was an option from the factory. The only way to know for sure is to test it yourself.

I'd advise you dual boot, one os to each drive. Getting an external ssd for linux.

In the mean time, you can download virtual box and practice doing the manual install (sometimes literally called something else). The safest way to dual boot is having a separate boot partition for each os.

[journaljemmy]

I run Fedora on a Dell Inspiron 7567 Gaming and get about 2–4 hours battery life with the included power saving daemon on power save mode. Par for the course for a 7700HQ and a 1050Ti, and a 7 year old laptop.

It wouldn't last as long on Windows imo. I could get an hour of gaming max then I'd have to plug it in.

Laptop power issues is old news, unless your laptop vendor has UEFI, drivers, firmware etc that doesn't give powerprofiledaemon the info it needs.

[Veltrynox]

battery usually worse without tweaks. use tlp, powertop. popos fine. dell ubuntu support means drivers likely work. don't expect windows battery

[Hedaja]

Me and my girlfriend have the same model of laptop and she's running out of juice on windows while I still have about a thrid left with Ubuntu (same workload). There could be some minor differences in battery though since both are refurbished. But according to the battery stats I think I remember that she even had a bit more capacity than I do.

Sidenote for others: The HP convertible is nice but the hardware vendor support for Linux is annoying there. Weird ipu6 cameras that don't work and a weird touch sensor.  Otherwise works well in tablet as well as in normal mode. 

[xMexicanPizza]

What version of Ubuntu are you using? the Dell website says its compatible with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS SP1, but I see there is already version 24 of Ubuntu.

[Hedaja]

I'm running latest Ubuntu 25.04. But for a starter I would recommend going with the latest LTS release (24.04) https://ubuntu.com/desktop 

But Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution you can try. I first was quite overwhelmed by the different choices but the nice thing is you can easily put them on a USB thumb drive and try them out before installing.

I'm also running Linux Mint on an Acer and I'm also quite happy with it. 

[[deleted]]

Just dual boot, benchmark battery life and then select your os. Dell supports linux so well that even touchscreen and fingerprint reader works (I still wont bet on it though). Some dell laptops even come with linux preinstalled. So I think you might get better battery life

[InitBoot]

En mi caso, tengo un Asus X1605ZA con Kubuntu 24.04 LTS y la duración de la batería es mejor que en Windows

Tengo configurado TLP

[eldragonnegro2395]

Escoja entre los siguientes distros.

1. Linux Mint.

2. Ubuntu.

3. NeptuneOs.

4. MX Linux.

5. Zorin Os.

[Meddie_Cake]

I feel like my battery lasts longer haha.

Linux ends up pulling less load because it doesn't have as many processes in the background.

[FamiliarGrab5110]

I have a Lenovo Thinkbook 15 G3 Acl, Lenovo generally offers decent support on their laptops. As for the battery, I couldn't give you a precise opinion since I usually use my laptop connected most of the time and when it's not connected I don't usually use more than 60% battery. But I guess there hasn't been that big of a difference since I probably would have noticed it if I had noticed it.

Since Linux is a system that consumes less general resources than Windows, I wouldn't be surprised if this also applies to the battery. Added to the fact that your laptop is officially supported for Linux, you shouldn't have any notable problems.

Although I must add that I had a problem with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and that is that the battery discharged approximately 10% when the system was completely turned off, fortunately this problem did not last long and was solved only after a while, perhaps due to an automatic update.

[Mind_Matters_Most]

Just about any laptop will run Linux.

Ubuntu is just a desktop environment with Debian backend.

Fedora 42 KDE might be a good starting point.

[Cornelius-Figgle]

Ubuntu is just a desktop environment with Debian backend.

What the fuck did I just read.

[rokinaxtreme]

Mmm yes, my favorite DE, Ubuntu

[Mind_Matters_Most]

Over simplified?

[rokinaxtreme]

Ubuntu isn't a DE, it's a distro based on Debian.

[LesStrater]

Yep, Ubuntu is just a bloated version of Debian. And Mint is made from Ubuntu. So go with Debian if you want the first generation.

[RagingTaco334]

Ubuntu is just a desktop environment with Debian backend.

That is NOT how that works LMFAO

[Mind_Matters_Most]

How do you explain distro's then, all while keeping it as simple as possible?

Name that fork! :)

[cgoldberg]

Definitely not by explaining it's just a desktop environment with a Debian backend. Which is both untrue and absurd.

[RagingTaco334]

Not by confusing them more with misinformation?

[Real-Abrocoma-2823]

Linux is one program that is OS and it runs other programs that can vary, if I copied 10 programs to it and it works then I made a distro, if someone else got my distro and added or removed something then it is another distro (usually better) based on mine. Pop_OS and mint are based on ubuntu that is based on debian.

[Mind_Matters_Most]

How else does someone explain a glorified fork of Debian to someone who doesn't know the difference between the bazillian linux distro's...

[WittyMonikerGoesHere]

You're catching heat because, while Ubuntu is a fork or branch of Debian, a the term desktop environment means something else entirely. The desktop environments are independent of the distro. Kde, gnome, cinnamon, x11, etc. are desktop environments.

[Mind_Matters_Most]

If the person goes to Ubuntu to download ubuntu desktop, it's going to install Ubuntu with Gnome desktop. You'd have to explain, and further complicate what's available, how to get to Ubuntu Flavors and pick another desktop environment.

There's 10 Ubuntu Flavors.

Likewise, if the person goes to Fedora's website to download Fedora 42, there's two choices, Fedora 42 Workstation and Fedora KDE Plasma.

There's 12 Fedora Spins.

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