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by pyre 5114 days ago

  You also almost assuredly get battery life that
  is worse to a comparable windows 7 installation
  with Lenovo customizations.
Why is this though? This has been the case for a while, but I'm unclear as to what optimization happens on Windows/OSX that doesn't happen on Linux. It's usually attributed to the Windows/OSX manufacturer drivers, but what are those drivers doing differently? Anyone have even a general idea?
1 comments

The most recent Linux kernels make big improvements there. My linux laptop battery life went from ~4hrs to ~8hrs when I upgraded from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04. The reason is a few patches added to the kernel in 2012:

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/New-Linux-kernel-fixe...

That article is from Feb 2012 and mentions two big power-saving problems with the kernel, the first one patched, the second (RC6 power-saving feature in Sandy Bridge) unpatched as of the article's publish date. The second has since been patched as well, for huge power gain.

By the way, I agree that recently things can get better. I stopped trying to get the Linux laptops in Jan after about 5 months of wrangling.