Making Fedora Last More Than Five Hours
When I bought this laptop in 2024, Intel had apparently discovered battery life.
Six hours on a Windows laptop suddenly felt possible.
Apple’s M-series chips were still the obvious benchmark for efficiency, but I wanted to stay on Windows at the time, so the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H felt like a reasonable compromise.
Fast-forward to 2026.
The battery now holds around 87% of its original capacity, Windows was filled with third-party services and bundled software, and the machine regularly used around 12 GB of RAM while doing absolutely nothing.
An impressive amount of resources dedicated to being idle.
Part of my move to Fedora was about reclaiming that performance and efficiency.
I also wanted animated wallpapers, something I had avoided on Windows out of fear that a wallpaper application would permanently reserve half the computer.
On Linux, I connected the visual experience to the power profile instead.
| Profile | Refresh rate | Wallpaper |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | 120 Hz | Animated |
| Balanced | 120 Hz normally, 60 Hz on low battery | Animated normally, static when discharging at 80% or below |
| Power saver | 60 Hz | Static |
The power settings, display refresh rate, and wallpaper behavior now change together instead of acting like three unrelated systems.
When the session is locked, the computer is idle, or the display turns off, the animated wallpaper process stops and the screen drops to 60 Hz.
After five minutes of inactivity, the internal display dims to 30%.
In power-saver mode, it drops to 5%.
The objective was not to turn the laptop into a slow machine with a nice battery estimate.
I bought a 3K OLED display capable of 120 Hz because I wanted to use it.
The point was to keep the expensive features available when they make sense and stop paying for them when I am not even looking at the screen.
That is what I like about the setup now.
Performance mode behaves like performance mode.
Power saver actually saves power.
Balanced mode makes decisions based on the battery instead of simply having a reassuring name in a menu.
I moved to Linux because I wanted more control over the machine.
Apparently, that also meant personally negotiating when my wallpaper was allowed to move.