Laptop battery drains very fast in ubuntu 23.10, why?

[brad2000]

Hello, i have thinkpad t14 gen 3 which is supposedly ubuntu certified. I uninstalled windows 11 that came with it and i decided to install ubuntu 23.10. however, i noticed that battery life drains much faster when using ubuntu (like 1% for every 2 minutes while i was just browsing using firefox).

I tried to figure out the issue but couldnt find it. Then, i decided to install linux mint debian edition (lmde 6 faye) and suddenly i am able to get much better battery life. I even installed windows 11 again (tripple boot with ubuntu and lmde 6) and i can confirm that i have about the same battery life between windows 11 and lmde 6.

So, why i cant get the same amount of battery life with ubuntu? In the beginning i thought it was linux driver issues, but then, i could get a much better battery life with lmde 6 which is also debian like ubuntu.

Btw i use the AMD version of thinkpad t14

[TenPlus1]

The simple answer is that gnome desktop is a lot heavier than mint's cinnamon one and relies heavily on 3d effects which leads to using more power.

[erastus11]

I realize this thread is almost a year old. I found it searching this exact question. But I'm on regular Mint 22 Cinnamon, not LMDE, and I have the same symptoms of drainage rate up to 1% every couple of minutes.

It would be nice to see some discussion of this. I just made the switch to full-linux, with Windows10 if in a VM if needed. So this battery drain observation is my only complaint. I'm enjoying the switch after using linux as a second OS for years.

[edit] Well I just realized this is Ubuntu - not Mint - forum, but anyway the difference should be minimal.

[Irihapeti]

These forums are closing in a few weeks and most of the helpers have already migrated to Ubuntu Discourse. You are going to be better off finding help on the Mint forums.

Thread closed.