My vote is that the default configuration should be maximum performance, brightest screen, etc. when plugged in. I do not mind trading performance for battery life, but a sane default is to turn off power savings when plugged in, especially assuming most users power down their laptops (or at least suspend them) nightly.

Sounds sane enough.

+1 from me! I've used TLP and PowerTOP --auto-tune for a long time without issues. These two, combined with some i915 module options, has my laptop down to <4.6W at 50% brightness.

I have an Intel CPU, so I also use the following in my /etc/default/tlp:

CPU_SCALING_GOVERNOR_ON_AC=performance
CPU_SCALING_GOVERNOR_ON_BAT=powersave
CPU_BOOST_ON_AC=1
CPU_BOOST_ON_BAT=0

You may want to consider some safe module options to pass from /etc/default/grub, including some i915 tweaks:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi_osi=Linux acpi=force acpi_enforce_resources=lax i915.modeset=1 i915.enable_rc6=1 i915.enable_fbc=1 i915.enable_guc_loading=1 i915.enable_guc_submission=1"

PSR is a good one as well to potentially save a little more, but is a bit finicky. I need to add i915.enable_psr=1 i915.disable_power_well=0 for it to work for me. Might want to keep an eye on what Hans is doing.

In T7911#127139, @mparillo wrote:

My vote is that the default configuration should be maximum performance, brightest screen, etc. when plugged in. I do not mind trading performance for battery life, but a sane default is to turn off power savings when plugged in, especially assuming most users power down their laptops (or at least suspend them) nightly.

I'm behind this idea.

+1

But at the same time, please stick to "widely" used power save settings. As you said, 99% of our users don't use these so far, meaning they're barely tested and some settings causing system instability on certain hardware is not uncommon.

As Rik said in irc, " if we are too push that on people by default, then we need a good case for it being of benefit to that majority, and no detriment to others."

I would support this only if we have wider testing. Something more organized where people input what they installed, on what equipment, and under what conditions they tested.

Perhaps a google poll or something? With a bit of publicity so we get quite a few testers.

TLP and PowerTOP are very stable and safe to use. I don't know of anyone who has a had a problem with the defaults. The link @ngraham provides explains the settings Fedora is pushing out, which are much more aggressive, and yet those made it through review over there.

It would be nice to see this not pushed later. How about enabling TLP and PowerTOP, but reserving the changes Fedora are enabling for 18.10?

I am new here, hope i am not out of order by replying here but using TLP before made my desktop computer freeze randomly from time to time. It was quite a hard to figure out it was TLP's fault because it was quite random ( it seems it was a problem between TLP and ssd disk ).

Also I want to point out the the assumption of this topic is not correct, Fedora 28 new power features are not based on TLP and powertop, but features in kernel.

source: https://fedoramagazine.org/announcing-fedora-28-beta/ , see the replies to user "Thomas I".
Also check linked pages from there: https://hansdegoede.livejournal.com/18412.html (the following quote extracted from there)

Let me repeat this: Enabling SATA LPM may lead to DATA CORRUPTION. So if you want to help with testing this please make sure you have recent backups! Note this happens only in rare cases (likely only with a coupe of specific SSD models with buggy firmware. But still DATA CORRUPTION may happen make sure you have BACKUPS.

and
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/ImprovedLaptopBatteryLife

I just wanted to mention here that I recently installed Manjaro on a laptop, and they included TLP by default. Out of the box I was getting battery usage on-par with Windows, very impressive. No USB/Bluetooth or other issues so far seen.

Is it too late to turn these on for 18.10? It would require some testing, I presume.

Also, to brag, an advantage with 18.10 already is that it ships kernel 4.17, which decreases power consumption slightly when a machine is idle: https://www.linux.com/blog/2018/6/linux-kernel-417-merciless-moray-offers-improved-performance-and-security

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