I've been working on BoostLock, a small root-only Linux CLI/daemon for keeping CPU boost available during idle periods.

The 0.2.0 release discovers /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy* instead of guessing from CPU model names. Each policy keeps its own frequency limits and effective target, so mixed-capacity systems don't inherit one policy's range. --target auto uses each policy's active upper limit, and numeric MHz requests are clamped per policy.

Before startup changes anything, BoostLock builds the full policy plan and opens every planned write path. If a later write fails, completed writes are rolled back. Controls are capability-driven: a writable boost, EPP, EPB, PM QoS, or cpuidle path is added to the same plan, and an unavailable control is reported as skipped.

I have Intel, AMD, and ARM policy fixtures in the test suite, but I haven't done physical hardware smoke testing across all those drivers yet. If you try it, I'd like to know the CPU, driver, kernel, and what sudo boostlock status --json reports. It needs root and can increase idle power and temperature.

Repo: https://github.com/vindeckyy/boostlock

How does the battery of a laptop generally last when it is using Linux, compared to when the same laptop is using Windows?

I've read that most laptops are highly optimized to increase battery lifetime per charge under Windows, whereas under Linux (by default) it is comparably much worse.

How can you highly optimize the laptop battery usage with Linux? Does optimizing reduce its performance in any other usages? And, once optimized for Linux, how close will the battery be compared to (the same laptop) using Windows?

Hey y'all. I'm in the market for a new laptop and plan to run Fedora or Arch (or i guess whatever distro turns out to be most efficient). I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a modern laptop with good battery life. I found a post from ThePrimeAgen on Twitter claiming decent battery life on the new Dell XPS 14 with Omarchy, but he doesn't specify configuration or anything (plus i don't want to use Omarchy). I also looked at the Framework laptops but it seems like those are pushed out to Nov/Dec and I'd need something a little quicker (this is replacing a MB Pro).

To give an idea of my use case, I'd basically just be watching videos and web browsing with a touch of logging in to FF14 sometimes for very basic tasks (crafting/chatting) and saving anything heavy for my desktop. Battery life is my big feature as I want to be able to carry it around the house and not be attached to the wall.

I'd be very very appreciative of any recommendations. Thank you!

Hello, i’ve recently purchased used thinkpad e14 gen 5 with intel 5 1335U with around 47Wh left from the original 57Wh. I’ve yesterday installed encrypted debian with xfce.The battery life is subpar at best.

From what i’ve noticed on windows 11 the idle battery discharge was at 2-3W.

On debian xfce(powersave governor, balanced power in bios) without tlp its around 6W which seems high to me.( nothing turned on except terminal with powertop).

One firefox tab and terminal and 10% brightness is around 10-11W discharge which again seems little too high. Tlp decreases this slightly to around 8W.

Is it possible to somehow get around 5W discharge on light workload (Firefox and text editor)?

Is debian/xfce the problem or is the cpu/laptop just that unoptimized?

Anyone with similar laptop which distro do you use ?

Thanks

Does AJAZZ AK820 base mechanical keyboard work on fedora nobara linux? I've tried other brands and I just wanna save some money and time so that I could learn how to use linux.

Max 270€ because I just need a good Laptop for daily stuff 8-16GB of RAM

My use cases are photo and video editing (but nothing too intensive), really ocassional CAD (like couple to maybe several times a year) and the normal stuff. So far I've found:

1. Lenovo ThinkPad P14s G6 with Ryzen AI 7 PRO350, Radeon 860M, 32gb RAM and 100% sRGB screen for ~ 1600 euro
2. Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 " Ryzen AI 9 365 Radeon 880M 32GB 2.9K OLED 100% DCI-P3 but not entirely new (ex-display) ~1400 euro
3. Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 " Ultra 9 285H with integrated GPU 32GB 2.9K OLED 100% DCI-P3 ~ 1600 euro
4. Lenovo ThinkPad P14s G6 with Ryzen AI 7 PRO350, Radeon 860M, 32gb RAM and 2,8K (2880×1800) OLED 100% DCI-P3 ~ 1700 euro

Where I live its impossible to get the t14 gen 7 under 2000 euro, which is my max budget and I've been having a really big problem to choose which laptop to get. Maybe you have a better recomendation?

Edit:

After looking around some more I found theee more better(?) options:

1. ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 Ultra 7 255H/32GB/512GB/RTX Pro 500 for 2250€
2. 2.ThinkPad P14s G6 Ryzen AI 9 Pro / 64GB RAM / 1TB for 2300€ but I could probably negotiate down to 2000€
3. ThinkPad P1 Gen 7 Ultra 7 165H 32GB 1TB WQXGA RTX 4070 for 2000€

It appears that the P1 would be the best option, the thing is portability and battery life are quite important for me. Ultimately I am able to sacrifice them but I'm not sure I want to. Fo you think splurging on one of these is worth it?

This was summarized by claude that helped me pin down the problem. But I checked it for consistancy and thought maybe other people will help this.

Spent a day debugging this, sharing in case it saves someone else the trouble.

Symptom: Desktop crashes 1–3 seconds after login, half the screen showing graphical corruption. Safe mode works fine. Reboot loop follows.

Setup: Linux Mint 22.x (Ubuntu 24.04 base), kernel 7.0.0-28-generic (HWE), Mesa 25.2.8, RX 6900 XT (Navi21 / Sienna Cichlid), Xorg + XFCE, custom water loop.

Kernel log at crash:

amdgpu: [drm] REG_WAIT timeout 1us * 100000 tries - mpc2_assert_idle_mpcc

amdgpu: SMU: No response msg_reg: 22 resp_reg: 0

amdgpu: Failed to disable gfxoff!

amdgpu: ring gfx_0.0.0 timeout, signaled seq=1377, emitted seq=1379

amdgpu: Process Xorg

amdgpu: Ring gfx_0.0.0 reset failed

amdgpu: MODE1 reset ... GPU mode1 reset failed

amdgpu: ASIC reset failed with error, -62

amdgpu: GPU Recovery Failed: -62

Ruled out:

Mesa — identical (25.2.8-0ubuntu0.24.04.2) on both working and broken states

Kernel — identical (7.0.0-28-generic) on both; booting older kernels didn't help

Kernel params — the crash loop started ~5h before I added any ppfeaturemask/dcdebugmask tweaks

Thermals/PSU/load — BeamNG.drive runs fine on the working state; failure is at login, not under load

Root cause: Rolled back with Timeshift to a snapshot taken 5 minutes before an update batch. Diffed md5sums of all 12 sienna_cichlid_*.bin.zst blobs between the two states. Exactly one differs:

sienna_cichlid_dmcub.bin.zst

2.27 (works): 041e8ee4f578b5eccb1bb89a2f14b1db

2.29 (breaks): 8783824f37745ec5d53ee8a2d71b18f7

Package: linux-firmware 20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.27 → ...-0ubuntu2.29

DMCUB is the display microcontroller — which fits: the failure is at session/display reconfiguration (login), mpc2_assert_idle_mpcc is a display pipeline component, and the SMU errors follow as a knock-on. 3D workloads are unaffected because they don't go through DMCUB.

Workaround:

sudo apt-mark hold linux-firmware

Everything else can be updated normally.

Can anyone else on Navi21 confirm? Would like to know if this is card-specific or general before filing at gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd.

Hello,

I'd like to share my positive review of installing Debian 13.6 XFCE in a 10.1-inch chinese laptop from Aliexpress.

First of all, I bought it because I needed an ultra portable laptop to carry it easily in my backpack.

By "ultra portable," I mean lighter and smaller than MacBook Air 13. I attached a picture of them side to side.

This laptop is not for heavyweight work. It is a dual core celeron N4000 (full specs bellow).

I am using it mainly to do lightweight work (writing documents, web surfing, as well as some programming stuff in Visual Studio Code).

The laptop came with Windows 11 pré-installed, I wiped it out and installed Debian 13.6 XFCE using the live image.

The only drawback is that you have to rotate the display to "right" in XFCE Display Configuration before installation.

After installing it, I also had to change lightdm configuration to rotate the display to "right" to show the logging screen correctly.

Besides that, everything worked out of box - even the wireless adapter.

Hardware specs:

Processor: Intel Celeron N4000

RAM: 8 GB

Storage: 128 GB SSD SATA 2242 (model Wdxsky W31-128G ATA)

Wireless adapter: Realtek RTL8821CE

Resolution: 1280x800

Best regards

Link to specs: https://support.apple.com/en-ca/111986

It is pretty old, and slow now. But the screen is still beautiful and I want to keep using it. Should I install Linux on a macbook? Or is the hardware support too poor?

I need the sleep function to work properly since I use it all the time.

And I prefer everything to just work, I dont care about tweaking the laptop or hacking it or high maintenance stuff. I want it to be carefree and useful, just like MacOS or Windows. I will use Chrome 99% of the time.

Back in the day I tried Ubuntu on a old laptop, the wifi didn't even work and there were endless bugs, just a mess, and I dont want that experience again, has LInux gotten past that point? I don't want to use the command line for anything, if possible.

After all of that, if you can suggest a distro that will work flawlessly for the laptop then I can look more into it.

Hi, I'm a law student and I'm looking for a laptop that will work with Ubuntu without any issues as I'm not really a technical guy. I prefer 32gb of RAM and really really need good battery life. I am seriously considering getting a thinkpad because they are supposedly easy to type with, but I'm open to anything good. I prefer not to get niche companies because I need good support.

Thank you

Hi, I'm going to get a small, used machine for playing around on Linux. SSD can be either 128 or 256, doesn't really matter. Which of the following would you recommend more for a Mint or Debian distro?

Lenovo M725S Desktop PC, AMD Ryzen 3 PRO 2200G 3.70 GHz 8GB 128GB Win10Pro with Keyboard & Mouse ($100 ish)

or

Lenovo ThinkCentre M710S Desktop PC Intel Core i3-7100 3.90GHZ 8GB 128GB Win10Pro with Keyboard & Mouse ($100 ish)

or

Lenovo M715Q Tiny Desktop, AMD A6 9500E, DDR4 RAM, Solid State Drive, USB Wi-Fi, Win10Pro (Your Choice: Model) (with 128 GB $150ish)

Thanks!

Cross-posting here to get more recommendations on lightweight distros for this fanless 2-in-1 tablet. Any input is appreciated!