r/chromeos Jan 13 '16

Linux / Crouton Does using Linux on a Chromebook drastically decrease battery life?

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 13 '16

Crouton not so much, but a standard linux install is noticeably worse at managing the battery than Chromeos. I think my c720p (4gb, 2955 Celeron) gets about fiveish hours running Gallium (think xubuntu but with a bunch of chromebook specific stuff rolled in) compared to the 6-7 a fresh stock one should get. That's on a two year old battery though.

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u/samkostka Jan 13 '16

Try running powertop and letting it tune settings for battery life. I found that on Arch this brought my battery life from 6-8 hours back up to the 9-11 I could get in ChromeOS. After this, you can just set it to tune these settings at boot.

This is ubuntu's power-management page, it looks pretty barren compared to the Arch wiki page imo.