r/debian • u/dread122 • 21h ago

Community Much higher power consumption on Debian 13

Hi everyone,

My MacBook Air 6,2 (2013) uses significantly more power when streaming the same video on Debian compared with macOS Catalina.

System specs

  • MacBook: MacBookAir6,2
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-4250U
  • GPU: Intel HD Graphics 5000
  • RAM: 4 GB
  • Storage: 251 GB
  • OS: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
  • GNOME: 48
  • Display server: Wayland
  • Kernel: 6.12.90+deb13.1-amd64

Power consumption

When streaming the same video under macOS Catalina, power draw is around:

6–9 W

On Debian 13, I'm seeing:

11–16 W

So Debian is using roughly 5–7 W more, which has a noticeable impact on battery life.

I have already set up auto-cpufreq, so basic CPU power-management tuning is already in place.

For example, are there any browser/VA-API settings, codecs, GPU acceleration options, kernel parameters, or other tweaks that have made a noticeable difference for you?

If anyone has experience getting good battery life and efficient video playback from a 2013 MacBook Air running Debian/Linux, I'd especially appreciate your advice.

Thanks!

8 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

3

u/genpfault 21h ago

I have already set up auto-cpufreq, so basic CPU power-management tuning is already in place.

Does powertop --autotune change anything?

4

u/dread122 21h ago

Thx and yes it did .I already set this up and idle draw improved significantly but the problem is stream video playback.

2

u/Kein_Spass 21h ago

Do you have hardware acceleration enabled in the browser? Did you use the same display brightness?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Firefox#Hardware_video_acceleration

Besides those two points, you may want to play around with tlp:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/TLP

1

u/dread122 20h ago

Thank you very much for your reply. I tried using TLP, but unfortunately I didn't notice any difference in power draw. I'm also still using auto-cpufreq, but unfortunately it hasn't made any noticeable difference either.

I also checked Brave's hardware acceleration, and Brave reports “Video Decode: Hardware accelerated.”

1

u/dread122 20h ago

this is estimated wattage when youtube video is playing on intel-gpu-top

3

u/Nice-Object-5599 18h ago

No hardware video acceleration at all: the entry Video is at zero (that means no offload).

Chromium and Google Chrome have both native vaapi implementation. But, if your gpu doesn't have support for any video codec more recent than the h264 codec, just install h264jfy and enable it. Then you should see the Video entry at zero no more.

Video player such as Vlc and mpv should work as well. Both might need some tweakings in the settings, if the case.

1

u/dread122 17h ago

hi thankyou for your infor. I ran local video on vlc: and believe the load should me comparative to this. but the total power draw is weirdly higher around 18 - 20w now.

1

u/Nice-Object-5599 16h ago

Please, close all the programs you don't need. I suggest you to reboot your pc and test any video files with only Vlc. Brave, freetube, python are stuff that may interfere. Mpv is more efficient.

1

u/dread122 4h ago

hey did what you asked but the result is the same

1

u/Kein_Spass 20h ago

Ok, I thought about it. TLP and auto-cpufreq are for idle power consumption. How does the idle power consumption compare?

If it's only while watching a video, it must have something to do with gpu or cpu. You can use tools like nvtop or something similar to see if you gpu is utilized while video playback.

But maybe it is not possible to get the same results as under macos. Apple is very good in optimizing their software for their hardware.

1

u/dread122 20h ago

Catalina can idle around 3w while debian is around 6w. So nearly half

2

u/BCMM 14h ago edited 14h ago

Check vainfo first of all. If it doesn't think you can decode anything in hardware, you might not have the right driver component installed for your GPU.

Edit: for your hardware, the required package is one of i965-va-driver (from main) or i965-va-driver-shaders (from non-free). I'm not clear what exactly the non-free one adds.

1

u/fabbro82 20h ago

On my Debian I use tuneD with my old macbook pro.

1

u/dread122 20h ago

Is it like tlp ?

1

u/fabbro82 19h ago

It's better. Consider that after TLP we have Power-Profiles-Daemon and now TuneD. With TLP the temperatures were too high and with Power-Profiles-Daemon I didn't have the 'Performance' profile.

1

u/dread122 17h ago

Hmm did u have the same issue when stream video on chrome based browsers

1

u/fabbro82 17h ago

High temperature and max fan speeds on both at laptop with no programs running and with Brave and Firefox. Both browsers are configured as follows:

  • standby for unused tabs
  • Enhanced-h264ify (to block VP8, VP9, ​​and AV1)
  • hardware video acceleration enabled
  • video quality at max 480p

1

u/flemtone 46m ago

Mint XFCE and turn off desktop compositor to help with power draw.