Any sense for TLP on Ubuntu 16 for newer laptops?

Question

I got the new Xiaomi 13" notebook and installed the 16.04 LTS on it.

I also installed TLP (Linux Advanced Power Management), however it does not support the x86_energy_perf_policy, and installing the linux-tools packages does not help resolving it.

Following this chat http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/39507/discussion-between-mookey-and-steve-roome, it appears that latest kernels already support power management, so is there any sense installing TLP on the latest laptops / kernels?

Solution

Yes, of course.

The Linux kernel has accumulated many powersave features over the years, but only a minority is enabled by default. I reckon it's really hard for the kernel devs to fully debug powersave on all possible hardware, so powersave stays disabled for the majority of drivers and it's up to the user to enable it.

Conclusion: a userspace tool like TLP or laptop-mode-tools is needed to enable powersave globally.

Want proof?

• Disable TLP via configuration (TLP_ENABLE=0) and poweroff / restart your laptop on BATTERY
• Run powertop and make a screenshot of the "tunables" tab
• Reenable TLP via configuration (TLP_ENABLE=1) and restart again – on BATTERY
• Run powertop and make a screenshot of the "tunables" tab
• Compare

You may also compare the output of tlp-stat and of course the actual power consumption.