Crostini Help - ChromeOS Flex

[Anindya Sundar Bhar]

is it recommended to install TLP, Powertop, and other cpu-freq tools inside crostini? Or should I leave it as it is since Google handles everything ?

[Mike Frysinger]

the point of Crostini is to install & run whatever you want

if your goal is to monitor & manage your CPU, you can't do that from inside Crostini.  the VM sees a virtual CPU, not the real CPU.

-mike

On Thu, Oct 30, 2025 at 12:39 PM Anindya Sundar Bhar <andyb...@gmail.com> wrote:

is it recommended to install TLP, Powertop, and other cpu-freq tools inside crostini? Or should I leave it as it is since Google handles everything ?

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[Keith I Myers]

Hi Anindya,

In most cases, tools like TLP, Powertop, and other CPU frequency tools won't be very effective within Crostini. The exception would be "top" based wrappers, which can help you identify and terminate long-running processes you've started but are otherwise difficult to kill. However, running `ps -aux` followed by `pkill` is usually just as effective.

Remember that Crostini operates as a container within a lightweight virtual machine. This means the underlying hardware is abstracted, so tools designed to change CPU frequency, power modes, or perform kernel-level tweaks will generally not function as intended.

Best regards,

Keith I Myers http://KMyers.me Mobile : (305)-929-3475

On Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 12:39 PM Anindya Sundar Bhar <andyb...@gmail.com> wrote:

is it recommended to install TLP, Powertop, and other cpu-freq tools inside crostini? Or should I leave it as it is since Google handles everything ?

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To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chromium-os-dis...@chromium.org.

[Anindya Sundar Bhar]

Thank you for responding. And yes, today I tried installing many additional codecs and non free firmware and some drivers and the crostini became totally unstable that I needed to re-enable it. So I believe users should leave the container as it is.  

[Anindya Sundar Bhar]

Thank you for responding. And yes, today I tried installing many additional codecs and non free firmware and some drivers and the crostini became totally unstable that I needed to re-enable it. So I believe users should leave the container as it is.