LMDE 7 Battery Life/Power Management

[blizzardfromoz]

I've been testing out LMDE 7 for a few days on two of my laptops (both are several years old). My main distro is MX Linux 25 XFCE beta which pretty much runs flawlessly and is lightning fast. Comparing the battery life for both distros it looks like the XFCE has a bit more battery life. Also LMDE 7 can be sluggish at times. I made an adjustment in LMDE 7 which is turning off "Desktop and windows effects" (start menu -> Effects) and this looks like it has helped a bit as most of the lag came from the windows animations.

MX Linux comes with TLP out of the box. LMDE does not and it looks like from some reading online you can only use TLP or the power manager that LMDE comes with and not both at the same time. For any of the LMDE/Mint Ubuntu version users (with laptops) I have a question. Do you use the default power manager or TLP? If you are using TLP do you see any improvement with the battery life? I will be trying out TLP myself on LMDE 7 shortly.

Another observation, when I change the power profile in LMDE 7 to battery saver both laptops struggle so its too efficient. I need to have it set at the middle setting (balanced) to have a rather smooth experience.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=438136

 

[CaffeineAddict]

Power management in Linux is one huge mystery I was never able to grasp, there are tolls but they're not effective beyond troubleshooting but lacking in providing adequate solution to problems on how to manage power management so that results are achived

This is what I can tell not based on my XP but based on XP of other users so far who complained about lacking power managements.

I did not delve deep into so I suggest a toroguh study of the tolls to make sure one understand why they do and what are their limits.

 

[blizzardfromoz]

Yea I am pretty much clueless when it comes to the power management stuff but I had started using TLP a few months ago and it has greatly improved my battery life (at least from my observation).

See post #18 of link below:

Thread 'Linux Mint XFCE'

Jul 28, 2025

I don't hear much about this version of Mint. Does any one here use Mint XFCE and how does it compare to the cinnamon version? Specifically what features are missing or have been taken out?

If there are any XFCE users here how does Mint's version of XFCE compare to XFCE in other distros?

• blizzardfromoz
• Replies: 32
• Forum: Mint

On the same laptop I was able to get a max of around 20 hours of battery life with Linux Mint XFCE (TLP), around 9 hours max with LMDE 7 (default power manager). and around 11-14 hours max with MX Linux 25 XFCE beta (TLP).

Anyway I will disable the default power manager on LMDE 7 and try out TLP. I'm just waiting for my timeshift back up to complete, get some free time, and then I'll report back.

 

[Brickwizard]

X Linux comes with TLP out of the box. LMDE does not and it looks like from some reading online you can only use TLP or the power manager that LMDE comes with and not both

I have LMDE7 Iam running TLP [its in the repositories...screenshot

 

[blizzardfromoz]

I have LMDE7 Iam running TLP [its in the repositories...screenshot

Great. Did you uninstall the default power manager or disable it? Do updates and upgrades remove TLP as the power manager?

 

[Brickwizard]

Just installed and left on default settings

 

[blizzardfromoz]

Installed TLP on my main laptop. I was able to get a max of 10 hours and 40 minutes at full battery. Which is a better max than the stock power manager. Also performance remains same or slightly better with TLP.

I restarted my computer after installing TLP and the stock power manager options were gone. TLP was running automatically after the restart.

Before restart:

After restart:

This is the same laptop in which I got a max of 20 hours with Linux Mint XFCE.