Hi

 

I mostly use Mint, so most of what follows is things you may already done, but for the sake of completeness my AI companion gave lots of things to check....  EG:

upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
  native-path:          BAT0
  vendor:               Celxpert
  model:                XXXXXXXX
  serial:               2493
  power supply:         yes
  updated:              Tue 22 Sep 2026 13:22:46 BST (28 seconds ago)
  has history:          yes
  has statistics:       yes
  battery
    present:             yes
    rechargeable:        yes
    state:               fully-charged
    warning-level:       none
    energy:              33 Wh
    energy-empty:        0 Wh
    energy-full:         33 Wh
    energy-full-design:  38 Wh
    energy-rate:         0 W
    voltage:             8.57 V
    charge-cycles:       257
    percentage:          100%
    capacity:            86.8421%
    technology:          lithium-polymer
    icon-name:          'battery-full-charged-symbolic'

 

 

Fedora usually runs hotter than Windows 11 because of a runaway process, an active discrete GPU, missing power-management settings, or a suspend/firmware issue—not because Linux inherently overheats batteries. First determine whether the heat is from the CPU/GPU or the battery itself; if the battery is physically hot, swollen, smells unusual, or charging abnormally, stop using and charging the laptop immediately.

1. Check temperatures and power use

Install diagnostic tools:

Accept the defaults, then reboot if requested. Check temperatures:

Check the battery’s condition and current power draw:

Look for:

• temperature

• energy-rate

• energy-full

• energy-full-design

• state

A battery whose energy-full is below roughly 80% of energy-full-design is significantly worn and may need replacement. Software cannot restore lost battery capacity. Fedora’s commonly recommended diagnostics include upower for battery health and powertop for identifying power-consuming devices.fedorafaq

Run Powermargin: 0;">Check the Overview and Tunables tabs. If the laptop is drawing a high idle wattage, identify whether the largest consumer is:

• Xorg or gnome-shell

• Firefox or Chromium

• an NVIDIA/AMD discrete GPU

• USB devices

• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth

• a VM or container

• a stuck system process

Do not apply every PowerTOP recommendation blindly on a production system, but you can test its automatic tunings temporarily:

This lasts until reboot and is useful as a diagnostic. If temperatures and battery drain improve, a power-management configuration is likely missing.

2. Select Fedora’s power-saving profile

Check the available profile:

Set power saving while on battery:

You can return to normal operation with:

Fedora’s power profiles normally provide power-saver, balanced, and sometimes performance; the power-saving profile reduces processor and device power use.allthings

Check which service controls power profiles:

Avoid running multiple competing power-management systems simultaneously. In particular, do not independently configure TLP, auto-cpufreq, tuned, and power-profiles-daemon without checking their interaction. Fedora discussions specifically warn that multiple management tools can conflict.reddit

3. Check for a discrete GPU

This is one of the most common causes of Fedora laptops becoming hot and draining rapidly, especially Dell, Alienware, and gaming laptops.

Identify graphics hardware:

For NVIDIA systems, check whether the GPU is active:

On an Intel/AMD hybrid laptop, inspect GPU runtime power state:

If the NVIDIA GPU is active when you are only using the desktop, browser, and terminal, switch Fedora to integrated graphics or a power-saving hybrid mode. Depending on the laptop and driver, useful options may include:

• BIOS setting such as Integrated Graphics, UMA, or Hybrid Graphics.

• GNOME’s Launch using Dedicated Graphics Card option—avoid it for normal applications.

• NVIDIA PRIME offload only for applications that actually need the GPU.

• supergfxctl on supported systems.

• envycontrol on some NVIDIA Optimus laptops.

After changing graphics mode, reboot and check again:

A dGPU that remains powered can account for much of the extra heat and battery drain; Fedora reports commonly identify disabling or correctly suspending the dGPU as an effective improvement.discussion.fedoraproject

4. Find a runaway process

Use Fedora’s system monitor or run:     

For a more convenient view:

Look for a process using sustained CPU. Typical causes include:

• Browser tabs or video decoding.

• tracker or file indexing after installation.

• Package updates.

• A virtual machine.

• Docker/Podman containers.

• gnome-shell or desktop extensions.

• A graphics driver problem.

• Repeated hardware errors.

Check recent serious errors:

Check thermal throttling or GPU errors:

If gnome-shell is unusually high, temporarily disable GNOME extensions

Then disable a suspected extension:

If the problem occurs only in Fedora and not in Windows, also test Fedora’s default kernel and desktop session. A faulty extension, graphics driver, or kernel regression can produce much higher idle consumption.

5. Improve CPU and disk power management

Install and enable TLP only if you decide to use it as your main power-management framework:

Then inspect its status:

If Fedora’s power profiles already work correctly, leave TLP uninstalled initially. Start with powerprofilesctl, PowerTOP, and GPU diagnosis; TLP is better used after identifying a persistent power-management gap rather than added randomly.

For a SATA SSD/HDD system, inspect link power management:

Fedora has historically adopted SATA link power-management defaults intended to mirror mobile Windows behaviour on supported Intel systems.fedoraproject

6. Check suspend behaviour

If the laptop becomes hot or loses significant charge while closed, check the sleep modes:

Since the same area stays cool in Windows, I’d first check whether Fedora is keeping the NVIDIA Quadro T2000 or another device active. On a hybrid Dell laptop, a dGPU that never goes to sleep can create quite a bit of extra heat even when you’re not doing anything demanding.

I’d run sensors, upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0, and nvidia-smi while the laptop is idle, then compare the power draw and temperatures with Windows. If the battery itself is genuinely getting hot rather than just the chassis above it, I’d take that more seriously and check the battery health before experimenting with power-management settings.