power-profiles-daemon offers to modify system behaviour based upon user-selected power profiles. There are 3 different power profiles, a “balanced” default mode, a “power-saver” mode, as well as a “performance” mode. The first 2 of those are available on every system. The “performance” mode is only available on select systems and is implemented by different “drivers” based on the system or systems it targets.
Generally “power-saver” mode will limit performance to save power. While in “balanced” mode power-profiles-daemon will attempt to make changes to boost performance when needed. In “performance” mode performance will be maximized at the expense of power.
In addition to those 2 or 3 modes (depending on the system), “actions” can be hooked up to change the behaviour of a particular device. For example, this can be used to disable the fast-charging for some USB devices when in power-saver mode.
GNOME’s Settings and shell both include interfaces to select the current mode, but they are also expected to adjust the behaviour of the desktop depending on the mode, such as turning the screen off after inaction more aggressively when in power-saver
mode.
The power-profiles-daemon project was created to help provide a solution for two separate use cases, for desktops, laptops, and other devices running a “traditional Linux desktop”.
The first one is a “Low Power” mode, that users could toggle themselves, or have the system toggle for them, with the intent to save battery. Mobile devices running iOS and Android have had a similar feature available to end-users and application developers alike.
The second use case was to allow a “Performance” mode on systems where the hardware maker would provide and design such a mode. The idea is that the Linux kernel would provide a way to access this mode which usually only exists as a configuration option in some machines’ “UEFI Setup” screen.
This is free and open source software.
Website: gitlab.freedesktop.org/upower/power-profiles-daemon
Support:
Developer: power-profiles-daemon contributors
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
power-profiles-daemon is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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