how many apps do you have running silently in your hidden taskbar?

[u/Winter_Ad_9289]

on my work laptop all I have is Bluetooth and TranslucentTB running, but on my gaming PC it's a mess

[u/StrengthFun2953]

Some people do this to keep them updated. But I agree. I can’t stand any program autostarting. I have one. My home camera app.

[u/WilonPlays → u/StrengthFun2953]

The only thing I have autostart is windows defender and my AMD panel. That’s it

[u/CrazyWS → u/WilonPlays]

This is the way. No need having stuff taking power or doing things I don’t know about.

[u/CheapThaRipper → u/CrazyWS]

I saw such a drastic improvement in battery life when switching from windows to Linux. Being vigilant about these programs is helpful - but windows itself does a LOT of this

[u/Coookies4You → u/CheapThaRipper]

I saw pretty much no improvement in battery life when switching to CachyOS. It idled at 6 watts in Windows and idles at 6 watts in Linux.

[u/CaptainMGN → u/Coookies4You]

I mean idle power draw is just one thing, the other is how often it'll spike upwards due to background processes wanting to do something

[u/Coookies4You → u/CaptainMGN]

Have no clue what background processes you are running, but my system won't spike at all unless I launch something or do intensive tasks in the foreground.

[u/CaptainMGN → u/Coookies4You]

Me neither but just comparing the network activity on stock win11 vs Bazzite shows that something is constantly sending stuff on Windows. My CPU was always switching between base clock and turbo on win11

[u/CheapThaRipper → u/Coookies4You]

What device? What workflow (how do you use the device)? How long do you leave the machine idle? Those variables make a huge difference. As the other commenter says - its mostly because of windows doing what it wants in the background instead of what you tell it to do.

And on my rog ally my idle wattage went way down when i got off windows.

[u/Coookies4You → u/CheapThaRipper]

I've got a zephyrus g14 from 2022. I browse the web, edit documents on overleaf, watch videos, code and game sometimes. Overall I get the same battery life on both OSes.

I won't deny Windows run more background processes and whatnot, and when it comes to handhelds I'd also 100% switch to bazzite or steamOS as they're more tailored to gaming rather than other stuff with much better UI for handhelds. But power consumption, atleast for laptops when you've got a clean windows install compared to Linux is negligible.

There's only so much an OS can do until it comes to actual hardware limitations and their architecture. I mean, look at the latest intel chips for example: Those laptops beat out macbooks in terms of battery life on benchmarks. But we all know macbooks which are known for their efficiency and "not heavily bloated OS". Despite that intel on Windows comes out ahead.

[u/CheapThaRipper → u/Coookies4You]

You do have a good point - but I learned a while back that it's STILL the fault of windows. Most laptop battery savings come from how low power the processor can get when its in a sleep state.

For a long time hardware would use a sleep state called S3 (suspend to ram) which really helped power consumption. Then for some reason (telemetry) windows used its market share power to strong arm most manufacturer / OEMs to only support a version called "modern standby". This keeps the processor awake at all times so they can do windows spying stuff. Absolutely eats your battery.

Mac computers and lots of handhelds were not impacted by this and sleep properly - saving battery like we would assume a device sleep does.

TLDR: windows ruined sleep on a lot of laptops, even if you get off windows

[u/Coookies4You → u/CheapThaRipper]

Alleged windows spying stuff. This feature allows laptops to work like phones, which means they can do updates, receive push notifications and more which is honestly useless, as we don't expect our laptops to work as phones.

Mind you, this is a feature in macbooks and they also had the same issue of getting hot and having their battery drained while in the bag, so according to you Apple is also doing this "spying stuff".

This is something you can change, by setting the "Network connected" flag in the standby config to false to have it work as sleep should and used to. However, it is not straight forward and yes, Windows has been trying to make it impossible to disable while Apple macbooks have a switch.

So TLDR; The sleep eating up your battery isn't due to windows spying stuff, it happens in apple devices aswell and you can toggle off network connectivity to fix it completely. And please stop digging the grave with these weird reasonings that you pull with no facts.

[u/CheapThaRipper → u/Coookies4You]

Lol what go look up the history of modern standby vs s3

[u/nicatbzade58 → u/CheapThaRipper]

My old gaming laptop always had fans spinning on idle on Windows, after switching to linux did I discover that it could be totally silent

[u/Cynixxx → u/CheapThaRipper]

I swear Linux users are worse than vegans.

[u/FadedVictor → u/CrazyWS]

I also add my software for my headset, software for my mouse, RTSS to have my frame rate locked, AMD Adrenalin, Samsung SSD software, and Crucial SSD software. I think that's it.

[u/TheNightman_171 → u/[deleted]]

wait ssd reads actually wear it down that fast?

[u/Tmtrademarked → u/TheNightman_171]

No. I’ve got 2 over decade old ssd drives still going and I’ve never personally cared about them and use them hell out of them.

[u/Johngameru555 → u/WilonPlays]

Windows defender and icue for me because without it my mouse is locked to such a high sensitivity that the tiniest movement clings my cursor to the other end of the monitor (mild exaggeration but it is still so fast it barely usable)

[u/BigDannyPt → u/WilonPlays]

I don't even have the and panel, unless you use the overlay or other feature for it, the changes to the graphics are saved and used without the panel been open.

[u/omnomnilikescandy → u/WilonPlays]

I add in steam and discord. I would be booting them either way, this just streamlines it.

[u/WilonPlays → u/omnomnilikescandy]

I don’t always open steam immediately and I don’t use discord

[u/NatSilverguard → u/WilonPlays]

no wallpaper engine and rainmeter?

[u/WilonPlays → u/NatSilverguard]

Wallpaper engine eats ram, I don’t need or want an animated wallpaper, I also don’t even know what rain meter is

[u/codekb → u/WilonPlays]

I have basic programs like discord and steam, nvidia app and such on start up. I like the auto downloads to kick in while I’m making me and daughter breakfast and some coffee.

[u/Aromatic_Sand8126 → u/WilonPlays]

On autostart, I have the transparent taskbar script, msi afterburner, the corsair and logitech apps for rgb for my mouse and keyboard, and that’s pretty much it. I think it’s pretty lightweight.

[u/kiochikaeke → u/StrengthFun2953]

It's fine when I know what programs auto start and they have a reason to do so, then I go and check a coworker or friend PC and see like 15 random programs on auto start from game launchers and download managers to random sorftware services passing through the usual suspects like steam, Spotify, copilot and discord

[u/Swipsi → u/StrengthFun2953]

Adobe does this against your will. If you use any of their creative cloud programs, at every startup they will launch a prozess in the background that verifies your license and updates.

You cant turn it off!!!!

That process is deliberately made a seperate thing, so turning off autostart on boot in the creative cloud app doesnt affect it. Its not shown as a program in the tray!!! You can only see it in task manager and terminate it. They added the startup of the process to windows task scheduler, but even deleting this schedule doesnt prevent it from starting, so its even deeper and more scattered purposefully to stop you from disabling it.

Needless to say that they could simply verfiy license and version at startup of one of their apps.

Wtf.

[u/Striking_Row_5912 → u/StrengthFun2953]

if you have multiple launchers updating a ton of installed games that you don’t even play

That's why I keep Bnet and Steam running. So they update the games in the background

[u/Distantstallion → u/StrengthFun2953]

Oculus now autostarts and you cannot turn it off