system76-scheduler VS upower-dbus

> I don't know what Popos does to make it more "gaming focused" than vanilla Ubuntu.

They have a few changes, chief among them being the PopOS scheduler which I find to be quite effective: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-scheduler

The desktop itself is a weird custom-baked x11/GNOME customization you won't really get on Ubuntu. Not many distributions can claim the title of being truly "unique", but PopOS does deserve the title in my opinion. Even still it wouldn't be my choice for gaming, but I'll defend it's identity as something more than another GNOME/Debian spin.

Power management kinda doesn't work on Linux. There are very minimal rules once you disconnect from AC, and most of the time you'll switch into high-usage mode when it isn't needed. There's not a clean way to fix this, to my knowledge; the Linux scheduler stack is just kinda based around desktop and server hardware.

That being said, I also use Linux on my Thinkpad anyways. There are decent enough workarounds that I can keep my system up for 5-6 hours when away from AC:

- Switching into battery-saver mode will keep clock speeds down, which generally reduces power usage (as long as you aren't slamming the cores)

- tlp can help if your hardware has power-draining characteristics (I don't use it, my defaults are good enough)

- Using an auto-nicer can keep your system feeling responsive when in power saving mode: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-scheduler

So... caveat emptor, YMMV. Linux is far from the most efficient OS away from the wall, but with a little bit of configuration I feel like my system does indeed work as a "normal laptop".

ran rtcqs as a replacement for realtimeconfigquickscan at the suggestion of Brock from System 76 (thank you Brock ily). As it kept suggesting that I build a custom kernel and I would rather switch back to Windows than do that, I checked github issues on system76-scheduler, found this: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-scheduler/issues/99. Seems to fit with everything I know about the situation.

system76-scheduler

For starters, you will get better performance using the stock (System76 kernel) but that's another conversation. To solve your specific issue you will need to install the missing dependencies with this command

And installing and configuring system76-scheduler, it works by allocating the most resources to the window you have in focus, so say a full screen game or a browser you have open. Keep in mind that it only works with the POP-Shell extension and if you don't use it, you will need this one instead.

If you start a game with game mode, then system76-scheduler lowers the game priority and makes your FPS lower: https://github.com/pop-os/system76-scheduler/issues/57

The service watches upower (via zbus bindings) for battery status events. When plugged into AC, it'll tweak the CFS scheduler's parameters to enable low latency scheduling to match the settings in the Zen kernel. When disconnected from AC, it reverts to the mainline kernel defaults to save battery. This affects how often the CPU scheduler switches between threads, with low latency scheduling switching more often.