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The battery life of Ubuntu is horrible compared to windows, 1 hour vs 5 hours. I am sure it is because the Nvidia drivers and the hardware running full speed all the time (yes, I know you can switch to Intel graphics, but the CPU would still run full speed while the GPU would be off).

On Ubuntu I can go from 40% to 20% in less than 20 minutes. Doesn't fast draining batteries like this damage them?

I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 on a Lenovo Y720.

wjandrea
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  • Voting to close: "Does rapid discharge damage batteries", regardless of the reason for rapid discharge, seems like a hardware question instead of an Ubuntu question. My rather cheap laptop lasts over four hours, so perhaps there are ways to reduce your discharge rate...but that's not what you asked. – user535733 Jul 06 '18 at 22:59
  • Questions about hardware are off-topic. You could maybe ask on [Super User](https://superuser.com) instead. But a question about why your battery is draining so fast, or why the CPU is always running at full speed would be on-topic. – wjandrea Jul 06 '18 at 23:26
  • @wjandrea This one feels like a "gray area". There are existing battery questions that are on-topic: https://askubuntu.com/questions/662286/battery-not-fully-charged-it-shows-100 and https://askubuntu.com/questions/789402/battery-capacity-below-100-in-dell-laptop-and-battery-misbehaving – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jul 07 '18 at 03:40
  • @Win IMO, you could remove any mention of specific OS's from this question and the answers wouldn't be any different, which makes it off-topic. Meanwhile the questions you linked are more like "Why do Ubuntu and my battery interact this way", which is on-topic cause it specifically involves Ubuntu. – wjandrea Jul 07 '18 at 17:51
  • @wjandrea Fair enough. I just think it's a gray area. As far as distro-specific the many questions on `grub` could also be considered Distro Agnostic yet are still on-topic. Personally I would neither vote to close nor leave this question open. It's simply not that important because most of us buy a new Laptop before replacing a battery past it's lifetime... – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jul 07 '18 at 17:57
  • @Win But Grub is part of the OS... – wjandrea Jul 08 '18 at 16:10

2 Answers2

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No. If the current draw exceeded safe limits, the notebook would shut down.

Please take a look at accepted methods to reduce power draw at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PowerManagement/ReducedPower

K7AAY
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Not exactly damaged but in theory your battery lifespan will be 5 times shorter.

Assume a battery can be charged from empty to full 1,000 times. Because you only get 1 hour out of Ubuntu vs. 5 hours out of Windows on a single charge you will be charging 5 times more often in Ubuntu. Therefore your battery might only last 1 year in Ubuntu vs. 5 years under Windows.

Take the formula with a grain of salt because there are other factors involved and I've simplified the situation. But it's probably safe to say the battery lifespan would be twice as long in Windows.

WinEunuuchs2Unix
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