Linux on Laptops ...

see here's the thing I can love Linux laptops especially on touch devices like a Microsoft Surface for example I mean just look at look at tourism animations I love it but there are some downsides when it comes to using Linux on desktops some being annoying some being frustrating and some being just straight up disappointing so I believe it's best that we covered that topic and figure out how we can improve the current situation but before we do that let me quickly remind you that you don't forget to give this video a like if you find it informative or helpful and while you're at it why not also subscribe to the channel as well I appreciate it okay so what are the problems with Linux on laptops or mobile devices in general after all most Linux distributions are more lightweight than Windows which should mean Less storage and Hardware demands as well as longer battery life due to less processes going on I mean just last week I made a video which showcases exactly that and yet many on the internet have a I'm gonna say mixed experience starting with high temperatures poor battery life connectivity and peripheral issues to some features straight up not working at all but why is that well see here's the thing most Hardware developers and vendors don't consider a laptop running anything else but Windows except Apple but that's a different story altogether in terms of functionality this can result in some issues for a device to function properly the operating system needs drivers and those drivers are often proprietary which means that their source code is not accessible by anyone but the developer given that most drivers are only written for Windows this is a huge problem since on Linux you would need to complete reverse engineer everything from the ground up now frankly on desktops many issues are already resolved since many vendors actually do participate in Linux development or the existing drivers are already so good that they just need to iterate upon the new release but for mobile devices oh boy the story is very different here on a desktop you typically don't have that many constraints you have a big case some basic necessities and some optional ones and that's it on mobile devices however we are constrained by size heat energy consumption a ton of sensors and displays which again need to be fine-tuned and given the popularity of laptops has a much faster development pacing and a swapping of parts and this is something that Linux can't always keep up with especially when the developers don't actively participate in driver development once something is released they are already busy with the next big thing yeah I know that's not all of them but it does affect many that's for sure and that's just one of the reasons why we see so many different experience online I mean last year I made a video about installing Fedora on my Surface Pro 7 plus and I stated the battery life on Linux is better than on Windows and for my office work that was actually the case on other surface devices however the story was already different and even I could replicate some of those problems as soon as I opened the web browser or watch the video for an extended period of time battery life then was essentially cut in half but why is that well of course because the lack of proper drivers that handle power management now luckily nowadays there are a few sellers that provide laptops specifically designed with Linux in mind and they even ship with it and that's really great but if someone just wants to try out Linux it's not really the best approach regardless of that there are solutions out there that can help you to improve Linux battery life one of the most common ones is TLP which can utilize and tweak a whole bunch of settings to improve battery life I currently use TLP on my Surface and it works wonders I didn't exactly measure it yet but from a typical charging pattern with Windows it is similar sometimes a bit longer sometimes a bit less but it holds around 10 to 11 hours another thing that I immediately noticed was that the device ran a lot cooler since it didn't ramp up clock speeds whenever I did something and all of that by just installing TLP I didn't tweak any settings manually now that being said TLP isn't perfect for once it can cause issues with custom kernels it might activate or deactivate devices or features whenever you are booting your PC or get out of sleep now some settings you can't tweak but overall it's definitely not the same than if we had proper support from the HAPO vendors themselves so yeah battery life is a huge issue but what about the other things what about connection problems or missing sensors well especially the first one is pretty hard to fix because it heavily depends on the device all in all the newer your device is the less likely it is to work but then again there are exceptions because sometimes someone does contribute some code or just did a good job securing good compatibility other times however nothing gets published I mean since my last surface video almost a year ago the camera situation did not change now having no camera doesn't bother me personally but I do miss some features that I had on Windows overall speaking if your device behaves weird and there is no dedicated app for to bring it to life then you will have a hard time but there are some tricks that might still be able to help you for once don't just choose a random distribution but go for something basic like Debian or okay I'm gonna say it even Arch especially if you have newer devices though be prepared to handle some maintenance if needed or you can just go for something that is packed by a company that sells Linux laptops their operating systems in particular do often have certain optimizations which could resolve many of your issues most importantly battery life or they have an awesome community that points you towards applications that could help Auto CPU freck for example is a great tool for handling clock speeds but it also has its limitations getting the right information is important for General debugging I recommend you to check if you have third party repos enabled some distributions often call them non-free because they are not open source then you can use a terminal and type sudo emesg to identify which drivers might be missing and you can look them up with your distro's package manager now this of course doesn't always work but I did find some drivers on all the Linux PCS so what can we do to better the current situation well first off we need to create a market and show how the vendors that we want Linux on their devices I mean Linux just does a lot of things really well I really love gnome's touch gestures for example they just feel right how can we achieve this well it will be hard at first but we can help by buying Linux compatible hardware and also upgrade as many devices as we can see what I did there with the upgrade yeah so let's do it I really want to keep using Linux on my laptops because it not only gives you the freedom to do whatever you want but it also never gets boring I mean if it does then I'll just swap distributions or the desktop government so many awesome possibilities you've liked this video then please make sure to show it with a like and why not also subscribe to the channel if you're still here more videos are already on the way but in the meantime you can watch this one next and all that's left to say now is good morning good afternoon or good evening wherever you are I'll see you around foreign [Music] foreign

Channel: Michael Horn

Views: 44,633

Keywords: linux laptops, best linux laptops, linux on laptop battery life, linux on old laptop, linux vs windows battery life, linux vs windows battery, linux battery life, linux battery life vs windows, linux battery life optimization, linux laptop battery drain, linux laptop battery life, linux laptop battery optimization, linux surface pro, how to increase linux battery life

Id: dhNLp7o5dr0

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Tue May 30 2023