I am new to Ubuntu/Linux, so please bear with me. I am using Ubuntu MATE on a laptop, and I'd like to optimize battery life as much as I can. I noticed that the Marco window manager can be set to have an adaptive compositor enabled or disabled. The only visual difference I can see is drop shadows being enabled when the compositor is enabled; but my question lies in battery life and performance. Will there be a difference in battery life when the compositor is enabled versus disabled? I found a stackoverflow question about compositor performance, but I don't believe it provides an answer to what I'm wondering.
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1How to increase battery life on Ubuntu 20.04 and what power saving software should I install, if any?... while does not directly answer your question, but can help. – Raffa Mar 11 '21 at 14:50
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Thank you for pointing me to that thread! – Drakinite Mar 11 '21 at 15:19
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Did you try any of what was suggested? It is good for the community that you provide feedback on what worked or did not. – sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio Apr 07 '21 at 16:24
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Battery life may refer to (1) the time a single charge lasts (and you can extend that by lowering power consumption), or (2) the time you can use the battery until it needs replacement (a.k.a. Battery lifespan or lifetime). It is not clear to me which of the two you were referring to.
Battery life
The point you are asking about is so specific that I doubt you would find any statement that answers your question. But you can readily answer it yourself by measuring power consumption under the two conditions you mean to compare, and assessing whether there is any (meaningful) difference. There are many alternatives, including powertop, powerstat, powerapi, s-tui, and Intel Power Gadget.
Going beyond your specific question, there are many other actions you can take to save battery life (e.g. this).
Battery lifespan
One important point to extend battery lifespan of Li-ion batteries is to avoid having it for a long time at 100% or 0% charge.
For that sake, there are several options (with tlp being a popular one, in particular for Battery charge thresholds), depending on your system.
Related:
sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio
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My question is about the former, as battery longevity/lifespan (the latter) has more to do with how the user treats the battery in the long run, as opposed to simply how efficiently programs run. The links you gave have some nice info, though, so thank you for the links. – Drakinite Mar 12 '21 at 17:37
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@Drakinite - Did you have a chance of testing any of the tools that can answer your question? – sancho.s ReinstateMonicaCellio Mar 15 '21 at 10:57