Discussion on:

Linux Achilles' heel: Suspend/Hibernate

For the suspend/hibernate thing, fooling around with linux and a laptop will lead you to know that MS gives a faulty asml compiler for the DSDT and so on... fixing a DSDT table, what fun... NOT!

The problem is that most industries and consumers consider their computers as a complicated appliance, only slightly more complicated than the coffee maker with a greater propencity to fail.

They certainly don't want to "get it to work" when it comes off the shelf. Until linux regularly works "off the shelf" with ALL aspects of "usual" computing, it wont get proper audience level.

Since the suspend/hibernate that "Just works" is a problem on many OS's as well as Languages (Think Java) I just got used to it, and therefore don't count on it. What supprises me is the response to your poll, that that many people see it as a problem. hummmmm. I can think of many more concepts that need to be addressed before suspend/hibernate would become of that importance. -d

It doesn't surprise me at all that suspend/hibernate has the most votes in the poll. Those of us with notebooks rely on suspend/hibernate to keep us untethered from the mess of wires on our desks.

I have a gaming notebook that has a tendency to run a little warmer that I'd like. If I'm running Windows, I can simply shut the lid and it goes to sleep and the system cools off when I'm not using it. Under Linux, if I want to not have it acting like a space heater all the time, I have to shut it off.

Also, under Linux I can't just shut the lid and toss it in my laptop bag when I need to take it somewhere, because the battery will likely be dead when I get there if it's very far away. I have to shut it down and then wait for it to reboot when I pull it out wherever I'm going.

So yes, hibernate/suspend is a big issue that needs to be tackled in order for Linux to be taken seriously as an operating system. If I can't be reasonably sure that it'll work when I'm ready to shop for my next notebook, chances are I'll dump Linux and buy a Mac, just because I'll know that everything will work. Always on and chugging away full steam is fine for my server, but not for my notebook.

I said I didn't realize it was still such an issue, or the Most Important issue. Things like that I find a way to fix, not complain about. And yes I've seen a lot of problems with WinXP and Hibernate as well. (especially after SP2). -d

I still have to test the latest osX however the previous version did not like the lid closed unless the user account was logged out. It was fine as long as it was at the login prompt.

After the batter fails, you just have a really inconvenient desktop.

I do agree and recall when suspend/hibernate was an issue with W2k, but that is something that was resolved years ago for me. XP has always just worked all all systems that I have encountered.

Why am I only talking about Windows OS in comparison, well that is the world I live and work in. Some people have Macs at home, but the only thing from Apple I have see in our office in 10 years are Ipods.

This goes back to the age old Linux issue that Linux servers rocked windows servers. But the workstations or laptops saw the reverse with Windows dominating.

Power Management is a big issue for laptops as they need to squeeze every iota of time out of a single charge on their battery. The suspend/hibernate issue is the most obvious expression of this. Users expect to be able to suspend a portable system, and have it come back up in perfect working order later with no lose of battery life in the intervening suspension.

But after saying this, I am gave for your counter argument. You say, "can think of many more concepts that need to be addressed before suspend/hibernate would become of that importance." Well, lets list a few and tell me why the are more important. I am open minded, and you may convince more than just me.

I chose support in reading it to mean support from hardware manufacturers. With driver interface specs, issues like suspend, wireless and other such things would quickly disapear leaving only the issues not related to closed product (and minded) hardware vendors.

For specific issues, I'm in full agreement that power management and NIC support are critical; wifi support has not been an issue but I learned very quickly about closing the even with a Thinkpad.

On a Gateway laptop running Mandriva 2008.
[ just last week ]
Suprised me, since it has been such a problem child.

edit: add distro version

Gateway system as well, running Ubuntu, the "out of the box" config has suspend / hibernate working.

maybe it's something Gateway is doing that is helping, but the software is working on their hardware.

I have a thinkpad R61 that came with Vista Ultimate installed. I was having some issues with Vista, no surpise there, so I installed Ubuntu 8.1, I believe. It installed without incident and ran OK. However, it would not suspend or hibernate. I tried several fixes, but none of them worked. Since I rarely reboot and like to pick up where I left off, no suspend was a deal breaker. I had to dump Ubuntu and go back to Vista.

IMHO, if suspend/hibernate does not work out of the box for most common laptops, linux is a non-starter for that market segment.

Both completely arse. Found a few things that were meant to cure it but didn't.

Toshiba apparently want to keep this stuff a secret.
(How hard can lid shut, lid open be, ffs)

I tried one fix and damn near killed the thing, turned my processor into a heating element.

Made me a tad wary of this might work I can tell you.

I use Ubuntu exclusively on my laptop and love it, but the suspend/hibernate option would make my life a lot easier. I'm not minimizing the importance of the other items on the list, however. After that, wireless upon waking would be my second pick, followed by easy WPA (actually, I think Ubuntu 7.10 largely fixed that problem). WEP is not that secure except as a 'You could hack my router, but why bother when so many others are unsecured?' PITA block. I'm sure that the developers will get to it, though; those guys are awesome.

on all 3 of my laptops. I'm using Mandriva Linux Powerpack. The laptops are Asus, Optima and Toshiba.

I support Windows XP in a government environment. Hibernate has never been reliable. The very few times it seems to work okay for the OS, we still have quirky problems with the many home grown applications we use. I support them, I don't code them, so please don't tell me that the problem is my cr*ppy app.

However, even funnier than that is the fact that most of our users don't know what hibernate is anyway. They would initiate a shutdown and slap the lid closed. They didn't know that the laptop quit the shutdown and went into hibernation. I would get so many calls for "bad batteries" (somehow they manage to discharge every night!) that I had to chuckle. So I ended up turning off hibernate on most of the laptops anyway...

given the subject and your name?

Actually, I read a lot here before I took a nick. When I finally wanted to register, it just so happened that there was a thread concerning IT employment, having mostly to do with working as a contractor vs steady employment.

Many people felt that taking contracting jobs might not have been steady, but they increased their skill set and regularly got to see a lot of different challenges. A few folks who wanted to bash made the comment that(well, okay SOMETHING LIKE) "you can go for a career with the government and die." So, in the choice of a nick, I acknowledge that mindset. In fact, every time I do try to get out of here, I find that the government's insulation against reality isn't always a negative. (In other words, we haven't been hit by downsizing, outsourcing or the trend toward lower and lower wages. On the flip side, you won't ever get rich working here. Tradeoffs.)

As one of the government type users, I appreciate this. It took me awhile to figure out that closeing the lid did not shut the system down. Something I have not been able to educate the rest of my family about with their laptops. My daughter has killed her battery this way.

Hibernate works fine on my laptop using OpenSuse 10.3. Never had a problem with it. My daughter's laptop (with Vista) can't say the same. It has refused to come back from hibernate on several occasions.

Can't comment on suspend as I don't use it.

strangely enough it seems the two OSs that have the fewest problems (at least reported here) are: SuSE and Mandriva. Anyone have another distro that has been successful?

There's also a nasty little side issue with hibernate/suspend on Linux: it can contribute to killing hard drives at a young age. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/59695 for more info. Read through the postings.

I've been working with Thinkpad laptops for years. (X22, X31, X32, X40, X60)
Some with windows on them, some with Linux, latelly with SLED.
Great laptops, great support.

Though ... regarding suspend/hibernate :

Some where buggy with windows until you had one magic combination of old and new drivers.

Some where buggy with SLED until you had the correct Wifi driver.

Most of them finally worked flawlassly afetr a rude month of tweak, whatever the OS. (expect X40 +windows when slept and then undocked from its base)

my point is :

This Is Not A Linux Matter.


Now, Troll, go home, and please don't come again until you have decet arguments.

The message failed to upload, so I opened
another tab in the same browser to be sure
that I would not be posting a duplicate.
Still, when I submitted the comment, it
appeared twice.

This is the last straw: you guys obviously
do not have the skill to be taken seriously
as a source of technical knowledge. Kiss my
ass.

Reading what you have to say is one of the reasons I keep coming back. I'm pretty sure that doesn't mean anything to you but at least you know it.

I'm still taking my page views to a site with Better Management, but thanks. It's mutual.

feel free to send a peermail message to me with your new alias and I'll check it out too. I was hoping Apotheon was going to get something put together but he may have too many irons in the fire to do it.



Just thinking about it, you can feel free to send me peermail/email messages anytime.

Keep dreaming.