doyougnu was previously running NixOS on a Macbook so their bar for "working" is probably much lower than a normal person's.
I'm on Windows, but if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat. I don't know what it would take to have sensible power management on Linux without major issues.
I get six to eight hours on my Thinkpad, running Arch Linux.
This did not happen out of the box. I think I got like two hours of battery life before I began tuning parameters. As usual, the Arch wiki is an excellent resource even if you're running a different distro: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Power_management
That's impressive. I've done the equivalent of tuning everything and still wound up with battery lifetime half of what it should be on Windows.
There's also specific programs that are really bad. Edge used to add 2-4 hours extra battery life when using my Surface to read PDFs. If I used Firefox, it was shorter by a very noticeable amount.
$ sudo powertop --auto-tune
modprobe cpufreq_stats failedCannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_results.powertop
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL Using PowerCap Sysfs : Domain Mask d
Devfreq not enabled
glob returned GLOB_ABORTED
Cannot load from file /var/cache/powertop/saved_parameters.powertop
File will be loaded after taking minimum number of measurement(s) with battery only
Leaving PowerTOP
powertop --auto-tune is kind of annoying to use, it usually winds up tuning something that shouldn't be and there's no convenient way to filter what it does, and then suddenly your mouse stops being responsive if you leave it alone for more than 2 seconds.
Also on a laptop you might have stuff being plugged and unplugged all the time. Tbh it's kind of surprising systemd hasn't grown a "powertop that remembers things" arm.
Experience differs depending on hardware. My Dell XPS 13 got 7hrs out of the box on Manjaro, which I tweaked to get to 8.5-9. On ubuntu I didn't have to bother with the tweaks. That's comparable to Windows on this device...
"Good battery life" is not my measure of good power management. I can leave my windows laptop sitting out, it will sensibly turn off the screen and eventually hibernate, I don't need to worry about it. A Linux laptop will need babying when it's not plugged in.
Gnome has power management features like that, didn't even enable them. It's the most installed DE I think, so your characterization of Linux is pretty off.
I like Gnome and its newest incarnation Gnome 40, but at least on Nixos it has some issues so I often rebuild to an i3-based environment instead.
Of course, depends highly on the value of "they".
Because the "you may have heard..." pattern is worse than useless, here's actual info to compare and decide whether either of these may work for you:
Sadly, protectionism is a thing. Launching in new countries is hard and expensive. Perhaps there's a company in country that would do it better than some giant international megacorp.
Framework does not ship internationally yet. System 76 does.
But if I’m buying a laptop for work why would I get a laptop from a manufacturer that has no presence in my country? What am I going to do when things go wrong? Unfortunately, it may be better to take a punt on a manufacturer with global presence.
battery life with that laptop was always better on the mac, but I regularly got 4-6 hours on that machine for years, first with Arch linux, and then with NixOS.
I'm on Windows, but if a Linux could give me reliable power management I would switch in a heartbeat. I don't know what it would take to have sensible power management on Linux without major issues.