well I could give you a solution, generally with x86_64 architecture they use a lot more wattage than macbooks, m-chip SOC’s (system-on-chip) utilize about 30W of energy whereas just a modern x86_64 CPU utilize 15W. which means you have a 15W overhead for your GPU and memory generally speaking.

So the entire reason your getting less battery life is OS required applications for it to function, and you. So if you minimize the amount of wattage (ideally building a linux system from scratch) you can optimize it to consume less resources.

I did this with my personal laptop, installed arch and mangoWM, didn’t even bother with a display manager or network manager (still use iwctl). on idle it uses about 600 MB, and I’ve beaten the m1. my point is not to compare or benchmark the macbook, but to just show you that you can maximize battery life with a little tinkering. So long as you are comfortable doing it.

I have used pop_os and cosmic DE it should be noted that is a beta version of pop_is, which means there are plenty of bugs, which means there are still a lot of optimizations. the fact you could get 12 hour battery is kinda surprising especially with a nvidia GPU.

so people reasonings are, that if you don’t use all memory then it’s just going to waste. which is true, but you also need to take into account the applications I use, ~10 GB of memory is used when i run vivado/vitis synthesis and bitstream.

the second thing i was going to add is, Do you know what also makes ram redundant? when the laptop is fucking dead. Which is ultimately why I’m trying to optimize it resource wise to extend battery life.

that said, i’ve optimized it to where I can beat the m1 macbook on idle. again, not something that is a benchmark, but to say an engineering student beat a trillion dollar company. I continue to smear that in apple fanboys faces as just a massive “fuck you.”

ontop of other user comments where it boils down to trust in the maintainer and code reviewers of the project, another reason depends on the use case that you plan on using your Linux system. for example, if I were to setup a nextcloud server, i’d generally go with alpine for it’s lightweight design, or Debian for it’s stability. I wouldn’t necessarily use Kali Linux, because with those features it also uses a lot of resources for it to function, and I don’t need that for a server.

in terms of my personal device I generally build those from the tty and add other modules (like DE, utils, etc…) to give it more functionality. Much like my servers I like to have my laptop optimized – take as minimal resources as possible – which is a rather controversial take after seeing users bash at me that I’m not taking advantage of all my memory. anyways, I don’t think there is a specific distro that has everything that I want. I want a system that works that doesn’t use 2 GB from the DE alone and that is accomplished by adding the modules myself.

I don’t trust any other sub-distro other than myself. I generally go with one of the corporate base tty installer (arch) and I build the system from that. I’m not going to switch to say cachy OS for it’s aesthetics, or ease of use, I couldn’t really care less.

yes, and I couldn’t really care what it was intended to be used for. clearly I could still use it as a WiFi utility posts installation.

As per the arch wiki it says “iwd is a wireless dameon for Linux written by Intel.” “The core goal of the project is to optimize resources utilization by not depending on external libraries.”

the point of why I’m using it is for that exact reason. it does the same thing every other WiFi GUI/TUI out there. unless there is a vulnerability/security risk of using iwd, I couldn’t really care less about the other options, even if that means manually configuring enterprise and public networks.

mangoWM. my workload requires a lot of resources like vivado/vitis. the more resources I have available the better. I’ve no where near customized my WM (FFS, I’m still using iwctl to configure WiFi), that said it does run great, using about 560 MB on idle.