Linux 6.9 To Support The Power Profile Key On New Lenovo ThinkPads

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.9 To Support The Power Profile Key On New Lenovo ThinkPads

On newer Lenovo ThinkPad laptops (2024+ models) there is a new key combination appearing to make it easy to switch between ACPI Platform Profiles for toggling your power/performance preference of the system. With the Linux 6.9 kernel coming in a few months this key will now work under Linux too...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.9-ThinkPad-Profile-Key

[kylew77]

While a key combo is cool, I don't know how necessary it is.

For example, on OpenBSD you just run the following:
apm -A (for automatic)
apm -L (for low power battery saver)
apm -H (for max power)

I've found my ThinkPad is plenty peppy in OpenBSD with apm -L

That's my two cents.

[endrebjorsvik]

Getting support for toggling Platform Profile through the dedicated hotkey is very good.

However, we currently have a challenge with properly propagating Platform Profile in userland. On newer AMD ThinkPads which expose both Platform Profile and EPP, only the Platform Profile is correctly configured by power-profiles-daemon. This means that for instance /sys/firmware/acpi/platform_profile is configured correctly, but /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/policy0/energy_performance_preference is left unconfigured. Luckily, power-profiles-daemon has recently merged a PR which allows multiple drivers to be used simultaneously (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/upowe...e_requests/127). This will likely fix this inconsistency. So watch out for the upcoming power-profiles-daemon v0.14. In the meantime I use my own hacky daemon to propagate Platform Profile setting to EPP: https://github.com/endrebjorsvik/pstate_update

The recent activity in power-profiles-daemon also shows that someone has picked up that service after Bastien Nocera was moved to other responsabilities. It seems like Mario Limonciello is now driving some of the changes, while Marco Trevisan is the official maintainer. https://www.hadess.net/2024/01/re-ne...ibilities.html

[timrichardson]

On both my TigerLake X1 (sold) and my current AMD Gen 4 P14s, you can swap profiles with Fn H = Performance (my mnemonic is H for High), Fn M for Balanced (M=Medium) and Fn L for Low
This is with Gnome. I use Ubuntu with liquorix kernel.
These are the same combos as for Windows as far as I know.
I have FNLock on but for these combinations it makes no difference.

[stormcrow]

While a key combo is cool, I don't know how necessary it is.

For example, on OpenBSD you just run the following:
apm -A (for automatic)
apm -L (for low power battery saver)
apm -H (for max power)

I've found my ThinkPad is plenty peppy in OpenBSD with apm -L

That's my two cents.

Necessary? No. Convenient? Absolutely, even compared to your short command.

It's one of those things I rarely expect CLI and some Unix people in general to "get". "Well I can just do do this... <string of commands + switches> so your convenience is 'unnecessary'.>" The rest of us just roll our eyes, shrug and more than happy to have some form of macro key do it for us even if we know the command. Given this is a Windows laptop, the options for changing power profiles is about 4 or so GUI menus deep or you have to start a separate power management program like on Dell and HP. It's an option set-and-forget on desktops, so it's only a Thing on laptops. A simple Fn+Fkey is still preferable to your one liner even in Unix-land. Quick, easy, notation is likely already impressed into one of the keyboard's keys so even if you brainfart and can't remember a CLI command - it happens! - it's right there on the keyboard itself.

[M@GOid]

Speaking of power profiles, a couple things got my attention last month.

While some of you guys were having fun shoveling snow, us near the equator line were melting away since is summer. It is vacation time for me and I spent more time than usual on my home computer. Since is hot, I spent a unhealthy amount of time paying attention to the thermals of my PC (ended unnecessarily buying a new cooler...). And one conclusion I got was that the Schedutil governor enabled by default in Ubuntu is way too aggressive with CPU clocks, making the CPU to run hotter than necessary for web browsing and other light loads. According to Phoronix benchmarks, the Ondemand governor is just as good without any significant loss in performance, while it manage to keep clocks lower on lighter loads, so now I prefer it over Schedutil when I a need more oomph from the CPU. Economy is what I use most of the time.

Other thing that got my attention was discovering that, at last in my desktop, video hardware acceleration is less energy efficient than letting it running on the CPU, at least for 1080p videos. Mad respect for the guys that managed to perfect software VP9/AV1 decoding, it is remarkably efficient now. At 4k though, the GPU gets the advantage. Also, having four 4k/60fps running at the same time had my Ryzen 5 5600 ask for mercy, while the GPU acceleration handled it like a boss.

[endrebjorsvik]

...
Given this is a Windows laptop, the options for changing power profiles is about 4 or so GUI menus deep or you have to start a separate power management program like on Dell and HP. It's an option set-and-forget on desktops, so it's only a Thing on laptops. A simple Fn+Fkey is still preferable to your one liner even in Unix-land. Quick, easy, notation is likely already impressed into one of the keyboard's keys so even if you brainfart and can't remember a CLI command - it happens! - it's right there on the keyboard itself.

Setting the power profile in Windows is actually very easy. In the general Battery/Charging/Power menu in the bottom right corner has a slider which gives you three-four options. Battery Saver, Balanced, Best Performance.

[stormcrow]

Setting the power profile in Windows is actually very easy. In the general Battery/Charging/Power menu in the bottom right corner has a slider which gives you three-four options. Battery Saver, Balanced, Best Performance.

Forgot about that one, but still less convenient than just a key sequence.

[markpearson]

Just to address a few of the points/questions - the F8 'hotkey' is essentially the same as doing FN + L/M/H; main points to note are:

- It's slightly different in that FN+L/M/H goes straight to the BIOS and that updates the OS with what the profile was changed to. The F8 key is an event to the OS, which then chooses the profile and tells the BIOS what it wants. It's minor, and from a user perspective insignificant.
- The main reason to get this in was so that we have support for the key. Trying to keep us on a par with Windows - and it was a pretty small and simple patch. Most people don't know about the FN+L/M/H combo, and from my testing it was nice to just tap a key once or twice to toggle thru the settings.

I'd really like to add a little on-screen display for it too - similar to what the keyboard backlight brightness key does. Still figuring out how and where to do that (I don't know my way around user space at all...but it will be fun learning).

As bonus side notes:
- Mario's patch to ppd (linked above) is great and combining the platform and the CPU pieces seems like a "good thing". I've tried it on my system and especially for extending battery in low-power mode it makes a ton of sense. Looking forward to that one being rolled out to the distro's
- The new platforms have for some reason separate PrtScr and the snipping tool key into two separate keys, and that breaks the snipping tool key on Linux (which only responds to PrtScr). Need to figure out where to fix that.
- I haven't yet seen any platforms with the new Co-pilot key that was in the news. Any sensible suggestions on what that should do would be interesting - kinda stumped how to make it useful

Mark

[endrebjorsvik]

J- I haven't yet seen any platforms with the new Co-pilot key that was in the news. Any sensible suggestions on what that should do would be interesting - kinda stumped how to make it useful

Finally an available "any key"! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Any_key