notebook is a 10 year old macbook pro without macos I installed xubuntu 24.04 in. It comes with an embedded battery.
First notebook I bought, not from apple, had a removable battery. The vendor told me to maximize its life I shouldn't plug the battery in, unless I need it (like for traveling). This way, I've managed to keep the original battery in good working condition for 8 years so far.
Back to the macbook: I cannot remove the battery and constantly loading it to up to 80% and discharge it up to 20% seems ridiculous. Furthermore, this would deplete the battery even faster, I believe.
What can I do to spare the battery as much as possible?
No it’s got a charge controller that keeps it from fucking up the battery.
Source: I’ve owned many macbooks and worked on many more. The documentation and best practices for both implementing charge controllers for lithium ion batteries and the specific best practices for computers and phones with lithium ion batteries.
Your battery ought to be replaceable once the bottom panel is off the case. Just unplug it and use alcohol to weaken the glue while you scrape it out. New ones are less than $100.
E: if you’re worried about the thing catching on fire, stay on the latest macos you can and trust what it tells you in the uhh battery health section.
If you’re gonna use Linux then go ahead and replace the battery so that you’re not worrying about it failing miserably to communicate with the charge controller or battery itself and tell you when telhe thing is fucked and need replacing.
I'm already using linux, macos was nuked.
I don't understand this paragraph. Do you mean new batteries for this model (macbook pro from 2014) work better with linux?
no, i mean that linux doesn't always interface correctly with batteries and charge controllers in devices and subsequently can't always tell the user about battery health.
the idea i was hoping to convey was that it's fine to rely on the macos battery health indicators to figure out if you should replace it, but if you can't rely on that software and especially if it's an old battery its a good idea to replace it.
this is what sudo tlp-stat -b prints:
--- TLP 1.6.1 --------------------------------------------
+++ Battery Care
Plugin: generic
Supported features: none available
+++ Battery Status: BAT0
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/manufacturer = DP
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/model_name = bq20z451
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/cycle_count = 666
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_full_design = 6330 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_full = 5043 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_now = 4936 [mAh]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/current_now = 0 [mA]
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/status = Full
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_start_threshold = (not available)
/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/charge_control_end_threshold = (not available)
Charge = 97.9 [%]
Capacity = 79.7 [%]
do you still recommend a new battery?
nah you got about 400 more cycles at least.
keep it plugged in whenever you can to make it last longer.