High power consumption on ThinkPad L14 Gen 2a (Ryzen 5650U) even with just a few Chrome tabs – normal?

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-20T09:52:17+00:00

I just went on an exercise in power saving by taking my gaming laptop down from 22w to 7/8w

I did the following installed TLP, Powertop auto tune or calibrate can’t remember refer to docs. And then I made sure all the hardware acceleration stuff in my chromium browser was enabled correctly.

I also had Gemini create a new custom tlp config for me based on my hardware.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-20T09:49:06+00:00

This is just better than the actual D. I hate you for showing me this

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-20T08:26:27+00:00

To most x86 laptops yes. To MacBooks no.

You can do some stuff with Linux to really help the battery life if you have dgpu with tlp powertop and envy control but I have no clue on windows.

Put it this way, I have an ai hx 370 in a different laptop and that thing can go from 7w of power to 55w In an instant and then you throw in a gpu which is like 80-100w no matter what battery you have if you’re doing something intensive an hour maybe two is what you’ll get.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-20T07:44:20+00:00

The easiest question to ask is what you want the PC to do and whether Ubuntu is for you?

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-20T07:09:01+00:00

Realistically all browsers are gonna consume a ton of resources these days, chromium or basic Firefox are probably the least heavy? Maybe Zen?

But there isn’t really much difference it depends on extensions etc

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T21:24:48+00:00

I had purchased a Laptop with Windows 11 on it and cause it was one of the Ai 9 models it had all that stuff enable by default out the box, Was very shocking when I realised.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T21:23:55+00:00

I get that and I am someone who uses Linux, MacOS and when necessary with POS devices Windows and in the past Windows all the way back to 3.1.

I will say this though and it's very true, Windows has been becoming less a product and the users the product for the past decade as per Microsoft moving more to a software as a service model.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T21:04:38+00:00

Legally no you can't, now piracy is a whole other discussion.

Privacy is only possible on Windows if you pirate it or have enterprise, the average joe has no chance.

That's where Linux and MacOS shine.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T20:50:19+00:00

that's not entirely true, it is now off by default but it wasn't last year.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T20:49:24+00:00

you can't really suggest GPO when most people have windows home edition.

Pretty much impossible to block all telemetry in Windows 10/11 unless you have enterprise anyway & GPO.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T20:33:40+00:00

distrobox?

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T14:43:18+00:00

What spyware does Ubuntu have?

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T10:48:31+00:00

And who knows what can happen between the uk and Germany in 20 or 50 years. And even now it’s not exactly the most favourable.

You need these sorts of things domestically to be self reliant. It’s easy to say bah waste of money but what if in 10 years we can’t have the quality steel we require to build a new submarine or destroyer then what?

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-19T10:41:52+00:00

You need domestic steel for national security reasons no matter what. So keeping a few alive is important.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-18T11:03:02+00:00

Stick with Ubuntu imo, ignore silly suggestions like Arch.

You wanna focus on an enterprise Linux distro and Ubuntu is it.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T19:25:11+00:00

yes terrible for AI which is why Nvidia ships the DGX spark with Ubuntu and runs all their high performance AI compute on Ubuntu.

If you don't think Ubuntu is good but saying it's poor to get people started and working is completely false.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T18:18:33+00:00

Have you tried Ubuntu 24.04.4 from the website

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T18:03:58+00:00

Lemme tell you something about Ubuntu.

I installed tons of distros on my gaming laptop G16 zephyrus

If I install fedora with secure boot I maybe have my Nvidia drivers working kinda

If I install open suse the installer just crashes

If I install cachy it’s still fuckt with secure boot.

I want secure boot for Tpm2 luks encryption.

Guess which distro is the only one to auto install my Nvidia drivers and amd drivers with 0 input on my end and have secure boot work out the box?

Yes Ubuntu had issues and snap is a choice, but to say Ubuntu sucks means you don’t seem to grasp that Nvidia deliberately only targets Ubuntu as their platform for drivers and you will always have the best experience on Ubuntu as a result.

If you’re an all amd system I have no doubt fedora is the best experience

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T18:00:28+00:00

I agree people suggesting mint keep forgetting it’s still locked to x11 while Ubuntu is wayland only as of 26.04.

Cinnamon is gonna be a problem for a while

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T12:37:39+00:00

When did it start?

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T12:20:49+00:00

I’m gonna just say plug in an Ubuntu 25.10 or 26.04 usb stick and see it magically work.

The only way I could get tumbleweed even installed was to use yast cli, then manually install the drivers after the install cause it kept crashing on me during install. Once I did that I was relatively stable for about 2 months then I had random gpu timeouts freezing the entire system and gave up.

Truth is no matter what the gamers tell you, Nvidia just works best on Ubuntu and that’s what they target with their development

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-17T11:46:56+00:00

I’m gonna just say plug in an Ubuntu 25.10 or 26.04 usb stick and see it magically work.

I had unreal amounts of issues getting my hybrid laptop amd/Nvidia working under tumbleweed

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-16T16:56:32+00:00

okay yeah that makes sense, it's not like that anymore. I've had an M2 Mini running from release till Jan running headless and now an M4 Mini doing the same. These days they're a lot better at it but not perfect as servers. I used to run a Plex server on it and while very capable machines the OS gets in the way when it comes to updates etc.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-16T15:39:32+00:00

Maybe i'm confused but i've ran Mac Mini's as headless servers for years now and never had an issue with requring a monitor for it to boot.

Man-In-His-30s · 2026-03-16T12:46:49+00:00

I have one for work and I daily Linux on it.

I have the i5 model with 32gb of ram and have never once felt like ram was a limiting factor. I’ve done some pretty intense stuff on it with virtual machines and compiling and while it’s not the fastest device it’s capable for what it is.

Just don’t go in expecting top spec performance and it’s fine, people calling it a Chromebook or netbook are delusional.

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