Hello. I know this isn’t completely related to Linux, but I was still curious about it.

I’ve been looking at Linux laptops and one that caught my eye from Tuxedo had 13 hours of battery life on idle, or 9 hours of browsing the web. The thing is, that device had a 3k display.

My question is, as someone used to 1080p and someone that always tries to maximise the battery life out of a laptop, would downscaling the display be helpful? And if so, is it even worth it, or are the benefits too small to notice?

  • @PetteriPano
    5•3 months ago

    My PowerBook G4 might be a bit dated, but running other resolutions than native is quite heavy on that thing. Your built-in display can handle one resolution only - anything else will require upscaling.

    Your GPU can probably do that upscaling for cheap. But cheaper than rendering your desktop applications? 🤷‍♂️

    You’ll have to benchmark your particular device with powertop.

    • @[email protected]
      1•3 months ago

      Isn’t rescaling usually done by the display driver? I am fairly certain this is the case for external displays. Are laptop displays any different?

      Edit: with “display driver” I mean the hardware chip behind the display panel, dedicated to converting a video signal to the electrical signals necessary to turn on the individual pixels.

      • @PetteriPano
        2•3 months ago

        For an external display I’d bet the case is the hardware driver for the panel.

        At least my 17" Powerbook G4 with a massive 2560x1440 display does it in the software display driver. I’m sure some laptop panels do it in hardware as well, but seems there’s some very janky shit going on at least with laptops that have both integrated and discrete GPUs.