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Compared to commercial operating systems like Windows and OS X, how advanced is the CPU frequency manager in Ubuntu (or Linux in general)? Could I expect better performance, i.e. higher sustainable CPU frequency and longer battery life, from one of those operating systems running on the same hardware?

gTcV
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    Windows usually has longer battery life. OS X I don't know about. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Aug 21 '18 at 03:00
  • Are there initiatives to change that? I'd be happy to throw some money at this cause, for this is quite a fundamental but also the only issue I have with Ubuntu. – gTcV Aug 21 '18 at 04:08
  • I am aware that there are a lot of power saving tips and tricks on the internet, but in my experience they tend to have a pretty minimal effect if any at all. – gTcV Aug 21 '18 at 04:09
  • The cause is Linux developers including Intel and IBM. I don't think they need any more money. The battery saving techniques for Linux doubles the life according to some reports I've read. All my laptops are plugged in 24/7 so I can't offer any advise. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Aug 21 '18 at 04:15
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    As for CPU overheating I have written this answer: https://askubuntu.com/questions/391474/stop-cpu-from-overheating/875872#875872 – WinEunuuchs2Unix Aug 21 '18 at 10:34
  • The linux power management group is constantly trying to reduce energy consumption while maintaining or improving overall performance and system responsiveness. With applications ranging from large server farms to phones to real-time stuff, the demands are tough to optimize. I think, but am not sure that linux defaults to higher performance over battery life when compared to Windows, but as @WinEunuuchs2Unix mentioned, you can change that. Note that for your comment higher sustainable CPU frequency and longer battery life isn't possible as one comes at the cost of the other. – Doug Smythies Aug 21 '18 at 14:31
  • I understand that there is some trade off between compute power and battery life, but I am sure there is also ample opportunity to just waste energy through bad controlling. My question mostly concerned the latter. – gTcV Aug 23 '18 at 01:18
  • Well yes, bad controlling can be a problem. For example, almost a year ago now we spent a bunch of time on the idle system. It turned out that in some circumstances there could be excessive power consumption in very unloaded systems. We're talking 30% extra idle power on large server farms (very small amount for a small home computer). For my system (an older i7 possessor) 9% energy improvement for a 100% load single threaded application. – Doug Smythies Aug 24 '18 at 19:10

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