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Comment by kybernetyk | Hacker News Reader

I configured my Thinkpad X280 under Arch to run at roughly 3 Joules/second. Which gives me way over 12 hours of active use time.

Linux is far superior to windows in this regard.

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Unless, unfortunately, you've got switchable nVidia graphics. As of last year, at least, without some real gross stuff you're looking either at awful multi-monitor performance on AC power (because the dGPU is permanently switched off) or awful battery life (because you're using the nVidia chipset and it eats batteries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner).

Nvidia's Linux support story has been crummy for the last half decade, if you bought a laptop with an Nvidia dGPU and are expecting it to work efficiently in Linux then you need an expectation reset.

Yeah, for graphics it sucks. OTOH, for CUDA it's literally just plug-and-play (at least on Ubuntu 20.04).

Makes a nice change from five years ago, when I kept breaking my display in order to make CUDA work.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/PRIME

> Joules/second

aka Watts

To be fair the laptop is rated for 16.5 hrs.

Yes, in some weird lab setting with 12% screen brightness and no user activity.

a friend got X250 with no tuning to work continuously for something like 26 hours.

But thinkpads didn't tend to remove batteries to get slimmer then.

how's the keyboard compared to 2015 macbooks?

It's very much OK. It's different but it's still good. I prefer the MBP (provided 2015 is still the old non-butterfly mechanism) but I would have no problem with switching 100% to the TP keyboard.

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