arch-update VS cpupower

Making first steps in Arch installed on VirtualBox (kernel version 6.1.11-arch1-1), on day three I stumbled upon the following case: I have a Gnome Shell extensions browser (FF) add-on installed and running as expected until indicator for Arch Linux updates in GNOME Shell extension failed because of pacman-contrib dependency not satisfied. I tried to install pacman-contrib and can see it listed, but the extension was still unusable for the same reason. So I checked the github page of the project and as you can see, there a link to AUR package is provided: https://github.com/RaphaelRochet/arch-update

I usually run it once a day when I see that there are new updates available.

Okay, after much tinkering around, I managed to find a tool that does exactly what I needed it to with literally no extra tinkering, which I found here: https://github.com/deinstapel/cpupower but to be honest it just raised more questions. If I leave the CPU on boost mode in the bios, it gives me pretty much full range of minimum clock speed and maximum clock speed (Except minimum can only go as low as 16% for some reason, which is odd, but I'm sure there's a reason for that somewhere.) But here's where it gets weird. If I leave the maximum at 100%, it seems the lower I put the minimum allowed clock speed, the more likely audio issues are to occur. (Mind you, all these tests were done with the maximum allowed speed set to 100%) For instance, in my limited testing I did, if I leave the minimum at 16%, audio issues happen INCREDIBLY quickly, but if I raise the minimum to 50%, no REAL audio issues seem to occur except maybe a pop every once in a while. I really would like to know the cause of this.

- changing minimum frequency to 100% using CPU Power Manager

You can check cpupower

thanks. i wonder if this extension uses that system.

If you install this extension and limit your cpu, you might.

To get some more detailed control, at some point I installed a gnome gui applet called CPU Power Manager. I set it to high performance mode here, and enable turbo.

On top of the GNOME power profiles, I use the CPU power extension (https://github.com/deinstapel/cpupower)

Whoops, sorry, I’m half asleep and posted the outdated extensions link. I’ve updated the link to point to their GitHub which also lists installation instructions — there’s a Fedora copr available to install the extension and it’s fully compatible with GNOME 42 too (I’ve been using it on both Fedora 35 and now 36, it’s working great :)). Sorry for posting the wrong link just before!

Take a look at CPU Power Manager but keep in mind that you will never reach the energy efficiency of Windows.