Fixing Slow Shell Launch With TLP

My laptop battery has been showing some noticeable signs of wear recently, so I’ve just setup TLP to try to get every bit of juice I can out of it.

Not long after I enabled TLP I felt like I could notice my battery usage decreasing. That’s either placebo or my battery really is just that bad, and I’m not sure which it is.

I also noticed my shell was taking significantly longer to startup, like close to a second. Anybody who makes even moderate use of the command line knows how annoying that can quickly get.

After some fiddling, I narrowed the culprit down to the following default TLP setting.

CPU_ENERGY_PERF_POLICY_ON_BAT=balance_power

Dialing this setting up one notch to “default” fixed my long shell launch times. I put this line in a new config file inside /etc/tlp.d.

CPU_ENERGY_PERF_POLICY_ON_BAT=default

I don’t know what effect this will have on battery life, but I’m sure the tradeoff is worth it.