Changes/TunedReplacesPower-profiles-daemon

Tuned Replaces Power-profiles-daemon

This is a proposed Change for Fedora Linux.
This document represents a proposed Change. As part of the Changes process, proposals are publicly announced in order to receive community feedback. This proposal will only be implemented if approved by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee.

Summary

Tuned and power-profiles-daemon provide a similar function to set and tune the power status of a system. However, the power-profiles-daemon provides limited profiles to configure the power status of a system. In the meantime, tuned provides many power profiles for different kinds of use cases and technologies. Both of them have similar features, if they can be integrated into one, it allows the fedora user to have more options for power settings of their system and benefits the users.

In this proposal, we would like to replace power-profiles-daemon with tuned. As far as we know, tuned already provides power profiles for different use cases and power-profiles-daemon provides the basic power profile configuration, such platform_profiles, Intel p-state and AMD p-state. We expected that the user can set those profile, tuned provided through gnome-control-panel. To minimize the information to the user, the power panel would provide a simple and advanced mode to show the power profiles. If the users want to finetune the system, they can switch to the advanced mode themselves. The impact scope will be on the tuned and the power panel since tuned should provide the basic power setting and API as power-profiles-daemon and the power panel should be able to show the power profiles that tuned provides.

Owner

• Name: Kate Hsuan
• Email: <hpa@redhat.com>

Current status

• Targeted release: Fedora Linux 40
• Last updated: 2023-11-13
• Announced
• Discussion thread
• FESCo issue: #3103
• Tracker bug: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>
• Release notes tracker: <will be assigned by the Wrangler>

Detailed Description

This work would like to replace power-profiles-daemon with tuned. Since tuned already provides a wide range of power profiles for different purposes, this allows the user to have more options for configuring the system power profile.

As far as we know, tuned provides many kinds of advanced and basic profiles for different purposes. Power-profiles-daemon provides the basic power profiles and the profiles can be set to the system through platform_profiles, Intel p-state and AMD p-state. That is simple and clever. However, if the users want to ask for an advanced profile, they need to install another power utility, such as tuned to fine-tune their system. If the power-profiles-daemon can be replaced with tuned. The users would have a wide range of profiles to fine-tune the system.

If the tuned would be the major power profile management tool, the major impact scope will be on the gnome-control-center power panel and tuned itself. Tuned should also provide the ppd API to applications. The other is the gnome-control-center power panel. An "Advanced profile" dialog should be made to show advanced profiles to the user. The advanced mode can be optional since tuned-gui can provide user interface now. Moreover, the server users need to get used to another command to switch the profiles.

The work expects the tuned replaces the power-profiles-daemons to offer a wide range of power profiles to the fedora users. First, we focus on the integration and make applications, such as GNOME, KDE...etc. work properly. To integrate them, tuned also needs to integrate the original ppd API to ensure compatibility with legacy applications and provide the basic configuration, including performance, balanced, and powersaver. For the user interface, the advanced mode for the power panel can show more options to the user but it can be an optional plan for now. For now, we can only focus on the original design.

Feedback

From fedora-devel

https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/B3UJKFOCRAY3BEEPTHVPW4RY5GFBZWHU/#B3UJKFOCRAY3BEEPTHVPW4RY5GFBZWHU

1. The dependency concern. Since tuned is written by Python, that causes a dependency impact on Fedora installation.

2. The power-profiles-daemon API should be ported to tuned to provide the function to the application that uses power-profiles-daemon API, such as gnome-shell and gnome-control-center.

From the hardware vendor

Moreover, we discuss it with vendors through the mail.

1. Since tuned covers several kinds of system tuning schemes that allow the vendor to implement their power profile for different devices or workloads. For power-profile-daemon, it only has three profiles to set and every detail setting should be done through the firmware level. If tuned can replace power-profiles-daemon, they can imagine they can develop the profile in a much more flexible manner.

Benefit to Fedora

1. Benefits the user. The user would have more options to tune their system.

2. Benefits the maintainer. Integrate similar software into one software to reduce the maintenance effort.

Scope

• Proposal owners:

• Other developers:

• Release engineering: #Releng issue number

• Policies and guidelines: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Trademark approval: N/A (not needed for this Change)

• Alignment with Community Initiatives:

Upgrade/compatibility impact

Both the tuned and the power panel need to be modified to integrate both.

User Experience

1. The workstation user can set the power profile through gnome-control-center. Moreover, an advanced power profile dialog will be shown if the users would like to finetune the system.

2. The server users switch the profile through the commandline or GNOME desktop if it is installed.

Dependencies

1. tuned is written by Python so it depends on python packages and its 40 packages.

Contingency Plan

• Contingency mechanism: (What to do? Who will do it?) N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Use the original power-profiles-daemon

• Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Before F40 beta freeze.

• Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change), Yes/No

Yes and No. The power status can't be set through gnome-control-panel. A workaround solution is to install power-profiles-daemon.

Documentation

I have talked with tuned about this information. https://github.com/redhat-performance/tuned/issues/559

N/A (not a System Wide Change)