Macbook air battery and CPU over heating problem

[justaguy27]

Ok so I have this old MacBook Air 11" Early 2014 version and I have decided to put the most current version of mint on it (linux mint 20.3 cinnamon) and all is well except for a few things. The battery life all of a sudden shortened by like 5 hours and the CPU gets incredibly hot. I have kinda fixed the heating problem by installing auto-cpufreq and it sorta helped the heat problem though the fan hasn't turned on since installation. I uninstalled the package and the fan still hasn't come on and it actually made both the battery worse on holding charge and the CPU still becomes to hot for comfort. I reinstalled the package and it helped out the problem with the heat a bit but not the battery life. Is it just time to put a new battery in or is there some magical script out there that I haven't found yet? also the sensors do not seem to give me accurate temperature readings of my processors anymore because when I use Upower and acpi and even the system info upload they all read different temperatures. I have been searching forever and I can't seem to find a solution.

[Pierre]

Hi justaguy27 ,
welcome to our forum.


it's none of those, actually . .

the Linux System, in general, is plain vanilla,
- when it's compared to either an Windows / iMac system
as both of those systems, do have some propriety drivers, in play.

this LinuxMint System, can't really obtain the same performance,
and you will see that in an reduced battery capacity & cpu abilities

nb: the fan should definitely be working ..

so, tell us an bit more about that machine:
viewtopic.php?f=90&t=318644
copy the results of that, back here, on your reply.

[Svein M]

There is a application called TLP that my can help set cpu in right power mode. I have not tried it with Apple hardware, but for other laptops I have tried it, it seems to do something just installed and started. There is also a conf file where many different settings can be set. There is one setting for running on battery and one for running powered, but if you wish you can run the power saving mode used in battery mode in both modes.

[Reddog1]

What does sensors show? The mac procs that I'm running now show 60C (+/-), high is 105C, and the fan is 2450rpm (min 1800 max 6200). However, I'm running Mint 20.2, not 20.3 or 21, kernel 5.4.0.125-generic. Keep in mind that Apple firmware will vary, depending on what version of OSx was last installed, and that could make a difference. If it wasn't for the Apple firmware, I'd say blow the dust bunnies out of the exhaust fan. I'm on my macbook, now, but my 2012 eleven inch Air runs at similar temps. That machine has linux EndeavourOS on it, not Mint, so it isn't really a equivalent for you.

[justaguy27]

CPU: Dual Core Intel Core i5-4260U (-MT MCP-)
speed/min/max: 1216/800/2000 MHz Kernel: 5.4.0-131-generic x86_64
Up: 1d 17h 05m Mem: 1120.1/3871.9 MiB (28.9%)
Storage: 113.00 GiB (31.4% used) Procs: 207 Shell: bash 5.0.17 inxi: 3.0.38

my bad, i figured i gave enough. this is what i got back with the command. hopefully this helped but yea im still having issues on trying to get the fans turned on. and my battery life is all over the place though when it comes to the time estimations. if there is a way to fix that that would be amazing.

[Reddog1]

Try a distribution other than Mint. First, a Debian-based, and see if the fan problem goes away. If not, then try an arch-based. Kernels are not all equal among distributions, even if they have similar numbers. With that machine, if all else fails, you can install OSx Catalina and then VirtualBox and run Mint as a virtual Machine. Apples are excellent VM hosts, really the best. If you end up going that route, and you only have a 4GB ram Air, then I recommend you use EndeavourOS--it's arch based and it runs easily with only 2GB with Xfce. Catalina will run as a host with 2GB just fine. Mint likes 4GB, even with Xfce as a virtual machine. I run EndeavourOS on a 4GB 2012 Air with zero problems (although the battery doesn't last as long as it did with OSx, which I expected). My wife's 2015 Air runs Mint 20.2 as a VM with zero problems, and it works just as well as a native install.