In Ubuntu 18.04, my battery life was getting so poor that I ordered a new battery from Dell. I was already doing everything to save battery, running with not-bright screen and the low performance Intel driver (not Nvidia performance video).
After installing 18.10, the battery life is more than doubled. Yesterday I used the system for 4 hours on a wireless network and the battery got down to 13%. Before the upgrade, it was, at best, 2 hours, often shorter.
I am pretty enthusiastic.
However, I have frequent video flickering that I did not see before. I'm using the XFCE4 desktop and the compiz window manager. These were OK/stable before, but now, at least once per 30 minutes, I look down and see flickering as the panel is redrawn. When I plug into a projector, it gets worse. The problem appears like long white "streaks" that jitter.
Articles about power management in Ubuntu say that the designers did not make power-saving changes in the past because of instabilities in access to devices. They mention USB and hard disk, but I wonder if video is related:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/361315/ubuntu-18-10-aims-to-improve-laptop-battery-life
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