Fast battery draining issue (driver issue?)

General Help
#6

Yep, happened to me too. But you know the worst virus I ever got? Boot Sector virus. Yes, those are truly nasty. Once you get one of those, there is no coming back from it. They destroy the boot sector and render your hard drive useless. You lose all data on the drive, and its been reduced to a paper weight.

You know how I got that virus? I was stupid and naive when I was younger too. I got on the torrent bandwagon cause that was the latest craze in the 2000's. Here I was torrenting away on Windows, and then wammo, got hit by that sucker.

Yes, I tried everything I could with the anti-virus programs that I had, but none of them did any good. Like I said, once you get a boot sector virus, its goodbye hard drive, begin the crying.

Linux is far safer then Windows when it comes to getting virus's and the like. However, you still have to be careful, cause what is on the rise again? Thats right, Ransomewhere! So, ya, gotta be smart, cause Linux is not safe from ransomewhere.

But thats why we are here, to educate people, to help them make smart decisions.

2 Likes
#7

Yeah, I thought so too but I couldn't find any in the "additional drivers" page. And the reason I had hopes to find a driver was that my laptop was originally shipped with Ubuntu but of course no one in my family knew about it and we gave it to an IT person who installed Windows for us.

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Well thanks a lot anyways @aravisian, you're truly a blessing for this community.

3 Likes
#8

For the age of the notebook, is it possible the fast draining battery is due to age, not to the system?

#9

Your post got a like from me simply because I saw the Ubuntu decal on that machine.

2 Likes
#10

It could be but windows is on dual boot and it doesn't drain battery this fast. If I'm not plugged in, the system can go 100 to 30 in just half an hour

#11

Hey :wave:

I am curious to know how old the computer is. To go from 100 down to 30 in only a half hour is crazy. I think even Aravisian mentioned this, if your battery is old, that means its not holding a charge for as long, a common thing among batteries.

But the thing that I think is odd, is you say that the battery doesn't drain as fast when on Windows. That almost gets me thinking about processes or applications running in the background on Linux.

I like to use the Stacer app for viewing running apps and processes. When you launch Stacer, click on the processes tab. Yes its normal to see Stacer using a lot of CPU while its open, don't mind that.

Look for anything bellow Stacer in that list, that is using a lot of CPU, post a screenshot if you feel up to it. One thing I have found, is internet browsers like Chrome and Firefox use a surprising amount of CPU, this is because they run background processes.

The simple fact is, if your running a computer off a battery, well, the more CPU that is used by apps, the quicker your battery will drain.

1 Like
#12

Well the drain time varies of course and the 30 minutes was a slight exaggeration but the issue exists and with my CPUs clocking high usages I wonder if it'd be a better decision to go back to Zorin 15.3.
I have the iso already and don't really have any personal data on here.

What would you recommend ?

Edit : The laptop is about 6-7 years old and I just got a new RAM (4gb) I'm testing it with memtest86 now

1 Like
#13

Well, in my experience, when lithium batteries go through many charge cycles over a course of 6-7 years, yeah, its capacity to hold its original charge, is reduced.

You could try going back to Zorin OS 15.3, but I do warn you its an old version, based on Ubuntu 18.04, and support will not continue for much longer.

I also wanted to commend you on running Memtest86 after installing new RAM, that is always a proper and recommended thing to do, good job!

#14

Zorin OS 15.3 will be supported until April of 2023.

I would recommend Zorin 15.3 Lite. You may also opt for Zorin 16 Lite...

Battery life on Linux Operating systems tends to go a bit lower than on Windows, in general. It shouldn't be that remarkable of a difference. But in spite of Windows being more bloaty, it is true it manages the battery life a bit better.

2 Likes
#16

And one more point, I've noticed that even though my CPU cores are reaching extremely high usage but I've noticed that I have about 2 GBs of free RAM. Is it something that shouldn't happen ?

#17

You say you have high usage on your CPU cores, what apps or processes are eating up so much resources? If your CPU is being highly used, like I said before, thats going to kill your battery fast.

As far as RAM goes, I find that Linux is pretty good at managing it for the most part. For example, if you have 4GB of RAM, the OS should not allow itself to use more then 2GB of RAM. So, thats why I said it would be great to take Stacer screenshots.

1 Like
#18

Screenshot from 2021-09-08 09-13-28
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As far as I can tell there should be no problem with my laptop because of my running applications but somehow the system monitor will show those cpu spikes. I've once seen the CPUs spike because I started the terminal.

#19

You might reinstall gnome-shell and some other applications to see if any were causing a memory leak...

sudo apt install --reinstall gnome-shell nautilus gnome-control-center gnome-software

1 Like
#20

My battery drops like crazy as well, within 15 min almost 30%. My laptop is from Dec 2017.

#21

Have you calibrated it?

#22

In linux ? i did nothing

I also checked in windows 10, my battery has lost 10% of life

Windows 10, 6 min test: https://imgur.com/W6jr4N4.jpg
Linux, 6 min test: https://imgur.com/PqVyrpQ.png

#23

This gets a bit complex...
But a quick and easy summary would be:
"How does the system actually know how much time or life is left in a battery?"
The answer is not as simple as a Voltmeter or a clock. Instead, an algorithm must measure electron flow and then estimate the variables.

Let's say you put a AA battery into a wall clock. Given the initial charge and voltage and the steady use /droppage, this would be an easy estimate.
But on a notebook computer, it is nowhere near steady and can vary wildly from within minutes, to within seconds to within milliseconds.
When you have some idea how it works, you are amazed it works at all.

The best way to calibrate a new battery, especially if you have installed a new or different Operating System, is to charge it as high as it will go, then run it until it dies. Do not charge in between, just run it until its dead. Then charge up to full again. Usually about three repeats of this is enough to give the software a good range to start its estimations with.
That sounds tedious, but with only a little planning, is often easier than you might think to carry out.

1 Like
Battery not recognized Zorin OS 16 Core
#24

Ah oke, most of the time it's behind a cable haha. Yeah i know it's bad but for gaming (as it is a gaming notebook) it is better because if i don't plug it my games go down alot in fps

Previous post i added 5 min in Windows 10 on battery, will check linux now and edit that post again.

#25

Honestly, I used my old Notebook before I got my current Tower as Always Plugged in. I have no idea what state my own battery was in. :smiley:

2 Likes
#26

Well i compared it and it is a bit different already

Windows 10, idle 6 min test: 4% battery lost
Zorin OS 16, idle 4 min test: 5% battery lost

So yes linux does use more battery in that short time. Will idle linux a bit longer now

12:45 43% now, report back in 10 min