39 ms·

Why does Linux have so much trouble sleeping and waking?

248 points by bamboozled 6y ago

Been running Linux for years and one thing that has always been frustrating is finding my laptops have either woken themselves up, or won't go to sleep. The majority of time they do work as expected, but maybe 20% of the time they don't, is there a logical explanation for this? I've had Macs and PCs which don't seem to suffer from the same issue.

PaulHoule 6y ago
Windows was that way back in 2000. Some android tablets are like that too.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  Windows still does sometimes. I've had two different windows 10 machines constantly wake themselves up (one was at at 1am!) regular as clockwork because a scheduled task you couldn't turn off had gone bonkers. My laptop still has problems with a .NET "optimization" task you can't remove that basically thrashes the disk constantly erroring for x86 assemblies I don't even use. I ended up replacing the program with an empty one, but every year or two it restores the broken program. I know it's back when my fan starts trying to take off like an aeroplane. I tried figuring out which .NET assembly was causing the problem, but in the end it was easier to just replace the offending program. The most annoying part of that process is that you can actually remove the task, but windows would then see it was missing within a few days and add it back.
INTPenis 6y ago
I've been lucky with Thinkpads. Have you been using Thinkpads? I know what you mean, it hasn't all been roses. But in general I have no major gripes with my latest Thinkpad laptops. Lately it's been amazing actually, on a Thinkpad X1 Yoga 4th gen with Fedora 31 atm. I can't remember the last issue I had.
- meibo 6y ago
  My 2013 thinkpad on Ubuntu 20 with newest drivers doesn't wake up 1 in 5 tries. It's frustrating, but at least now that I don't have to leave my house anymore, it doesn't matter too much!
  - WillYouFinish 6y ago
    I have this issue with my T470. I'd love to use some Linux distribution, but not waking up brought me back to Windows. A temporary solution was just keeping it on, which used up about 13% of the battery per night, but that's not a long term solution.
    - qz2 6y ago
      my T440, T470 and T495s all do the same thing. Nightmare. I use a mac mini most of the time now though.
- est31 6y ago
  The first wakeup issue I had was on a T495... but a software upgrade fixed it thankfully. Now another software upgrade broke my desktop's waking up which has been working fine for 4 years...
- war1025 6y ago
  My Thinkpad is the only computer I've ever had hibernate issues with. At some point three or four years ago there was an article I saw where someone realized the way Linux handled memory layout during hibernate was way over complicated and they redid it much more simply. Ever since then I haven't had any issues with hibernate, either on my Thinkpad or my multiple Dell machines. I did have a fun regression recently where my ~10 year old desktop machine started randomly hanging and it seems to be a regression of some sort in the nouveau drivers since reverting to a previous kernel version fixed the issue.
- alwaysontime 6y ago
  I use a Lenovo X1 Gen 3 with Fedora 33, and have always had issues with lid close sleep/wake/hibernate. I needed to use this UPower workaround (https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/linux-laptop-low-battery-suspend.html https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/linux-laptop-low-battery-suspend...) to get it to work halfway decently, and it is still problematic.
mushufasa 6y ago
I've always assumed this is more a factor of installing linux "aftermarket" versus the manufacturer able to be careful about the bios+os interop, rather than anything with the OS itself. I imagine hackintoshes are similar. AFAIK linux-only distributors like System76 don't have this problem.
- skykooler 6y ago
  In my experience, hackintoshes sleep/wake much more quickly than Linux, even on the same hardware.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > AFAIK linux-only distributors like System76 don't have this problem. Doesn't need to be linux-only, just well supported. My Dells and Thinkpads don't give be any trouble.
  - mlonkibjuyhv 6y ago
    My XPS13 9360 or similar has given me a few issues over the years: Occasionally not sleeping, inability to wake WiFi-circuit from low-power mode, sometimes the touchpad would freak out - I think it would latch a multitouch state pressed down.
wpietri 6y ago
Which hardware are you using? My assorted Thinkpads haven't had that trouble in quite a while. (Although the sleep/wake stuff definitely seems janky to me in terms of UI behavior.)
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  Not the OP, but I've got an older W530, and it's a very careful dance for me with sleep and power. If I'm using it at a desk, I have to unplug the power, wait a few seconds, and then close the lid. If I close the lid and then unplug the power, the power change event seems to wake the system back up and I'll find it hot with a dead battery in my backpack when I get to my destination. Running Ubuntu 18.04. When I finally get around to the 20.04 upgrade I'll test it again and see if it's fixed, but I have my doubts.
- vvillena 6y ago
  I have a T495 with a Ryzen processor running Arch that has some issues waking up (maybe once or twice a month). Sometimes it refuses to wake up, and sometimes it wakes up but CPU clock speed gets stuck at minimum frequency, making the laptop extremely sluggish until the next reboot. I also have a Legion Y520 that has been working perfectly for the past two years, so for me, the answer is that it indeed varies from laptop to laptop.
steviedotboston 6y ago
Drivers. The way laptops sleep and wake is pretty unique to each type of computer, and many manufacturers don't care about Linux support so kernel developers are left to figure it out on their own. I haven't used Linux on a desktop/laptop in a decade so it's sad to hear that things are still the same.
- kreetx 6y ago
  E.g on my 2015 macbook pro I need to remove and re-add the wifi driver module to make it connect.
  - Klonoar 6y ago
    ...what? The 2015's were incredibly solid machines, I've never heard of an issue like this happening. I still daily my 2015MBP and the thing is an absolute tank where everything just works. I would literally bet money that your issue is hardware, not software. Edit: I realize now that this comment could be referring to running Linux on a 2015 MBP, in which case I'm a moron and we can just disregard my comment.
    - kreetx 6y ago
      Yeah, it's Linux. :) macOS always ran nicely, and the hardware itself is great. I think if somebody more capable in Linux kernel/drivers' hacking looked into it they could fix it, it's just that nobody cares (and `rmmod brcmfmac && modprobe brcmfmac` is simple enough).
- pwg 6y ago
  This ... If the OP does some internet research into this topic they will find articles detailing how almost all [1] non-apple laptop makers build to a single target: ms-windows. They also test against a single target: ms-windows. If it works there, they are done. Linux compatibility is not even an afterthought. And as each makers various models all seem to also have slightly different ways to perform sleep/hibernate and subsequent wakeup, the result is that Linux kernel dev's are playing a continuous game of catch-up. One thing I've found is that upgrading the kernel to a later release sometimes fixes the issues (assuming patches were supplied by someone in the interim to fix them). [1] Very few makers have any laptops that ship, from the maker, with Linux preinstalled, the few that do (one or two Dell models, the aftermarket "Linux Laptop" vendors, maybe a sliver of others) will more than likely work properly for sleep/wake. The reason why these work better is because the maker should, in theory, test for Linux compatibility and help fix any bugs (or simply build with compatible chipsets from the outset) since they are selling these with "Linux pre-loaded".
cashewchoo 6y ago
My last 2 laptops: T440s and an XPS 13 (9310) have both not had this issue, and that accounts for about the last 6 years of linux laptop usage for me. Several crummy laptops (the 300-700 dollar range at best buy) prior to that have had it, though.
- MrOwen 6y ago
  I have a similar experience with T4xx laptops. I think most likely answer is every engineer at Red Hat is given a thinkpad T or P series so I figure plenty of them contributed fixes for sleep, power, etc. Dell obviously has Linux certified laptops so I'm sure it's a similar story.
peatmoss 6y ago
As a widespread counterpoint, look at Chrome OS. I’ve never seen any ChromeBook, clear back to the very first CR-48 ever fail on this. That said, I have a work laptop (HP Elitebook G5) running Ubuntu that wakes and sleeps perfectly. Same situation with Ubuntu on my desktop PC.
- toyg 6y ago
  It's easy to make things work when you control both hardware and software.
  - chungus_khan 6y ago
    Which is also the Apple approach. Mac OS is pretty terrible at sleep and wake on non-Apple hardware, but of course it is, Apple doesn't test against hardware they don't support. In both cases it isn't anything wrong with the Linux or Darwin kernels, it's inconsistent implementations and little manufacturer care.
- sgt 6y ago
  Why would Chrome OS be considered an alternative to Linux? The only thing in common seems to be the kernel running somewhere under the hood.
  - sp332 6y ago
    Just pointing out that Linux can sleep. It's not an inherent issue.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    ChromeOS comes out of the box with a full Linux userspace. It has a terminal emulator, X11, software toolchain, and the rest of it.
- mikelward 6y ago
  Last I knew, they did not support hibernate. I understand it's not quite the same thing, but it means you either need to turn it off, or charge it every week, even if you're not using it.
lbhdc 6y ago
I have experienced this on desktops that I have built. I haven't had this problem on my laptops in a while though. I am running stock Fedora on thinkpads for my past few laptops, and hardware support has been great. I haven't experienced the same hardware issues that I did on my desktop.
sheepdestroyer 6y ago
Use a thinkpad and avoid problems
- nichch 6y ago
  Actually, my T480 on Ubuntu 20.04 drains battery drastically while “sleeping”. I believe it isn’t hitting S3, but I haven’t done too much troubleshooting.
  - jusssi 6y ago
    I had some success with T480 sleep battery drain by finding a bios option to turn off all USB when sleeping. Went from empty overnight to can sleep over weekend.
    - nichch 6y ago
      Just tried it and it made no change, thank you for the tip anyway!
      - jusssi 6y ago
        Yeah. All the PM stuff with Ubuntu and T480 was a bit of a disaster, there was issues at least with Thunderbolt and NVIDIA discrete graphics eating up the battery. IIRC in the end I think I just found a way to completely disable both. The T480 I had was a company laptop and I don't have it anymore, so I can't check.
        nichch 6y ago
        What's your daily driver now, if I may ask? I was seriously considering the T14, but the M1 Air is tempting me.
        jusssi 6y ago
        I now have a P14s, as a weird compromise between what I wanted (14", under 2kg), company requirements for the size class (Lenovo with Intel i7 or i9 and NVIDIA discrete graphics), and what the supplier had available with short notice. Given free choice, I'd probably got a T495 or T14 with AMD. Mostly the P14s feels the same as the T480 did. I have none but the usual complaints (+ too new hardware so drivers are still a bit flaky), though I think the underpowered discrete graphics is a waste of money at least for my use.
ruste 6y ago
I've spent the last decade exclusively on lower-end and more obscure linux laptops. Haven't had a single issue. I'm probably the exception that proves the rule though. I've found that most of the time it's not a linux / kernel issue, it's a udev or config issue. If you write 'mem' to the right file in /proc or /sys (I forget which) they just go to sleep. Any acpi event will wake them back up. I've done this with all sorts of custom kernel configurations on older chromebooks and cheap chinese laptops. Never had an issue. Sleeping to memory works great. Sleeping to disk or 'hybernate' is another story though. You need swap properly configured for that and it's finicky.
- sgt 6y ago
  Sleep is merely a few commands away. What's to complain about?
  - ruste 6y ago
    My point here is that it's largely not a drivers/support issue at this point. A crazy amount of hardware is supported.
londons_explore 6y ago
Sleep/wake/hibernate isn't a feature servers, home routers, or a whole host of other Linux powered commercial devices use. That means it doesn't get much attention from Linux kernel developers. In turn, the implementation is rather poor. For example, it is impossible to suspend any machine while any ssh directory is mounted. It's been a bug for 10+ years. The bug is architectural and pretty much impossible to fix (Any file or directory read hangs on the SSH connection, and a process can't be paused for hibernation while a non-restartable syscall is running.) While this kind of architectural bug exists, Linux hibernation will never be good. Fixing that bug properly is probably $500k worth of developer resources. Nobody wants to pay.
- halz 6y ago
  'Cloud-space' seem to be making use of hibernate to some acclaim (e.g. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Hibernate.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Hibernat...)
- idoubtit 6y ago
  Are you sure this bug was not resolved long ago? My laptop auto-mounts a sshfs directory at startup and hibernates with no problem. On resume, the sshfs mount still responds. Having an open shell on that directory is no problem, except that I can't manually unmount a FS being accessed. I remember configuring this when this Debian Testing laptop switched to systemd, years ago.
  - kasabali 6y ago
    Not by a long shot. Simply being mounted isn't a problem. A syscall needs to be hung on a network request. I regularly hit this issue. Most recent one was last year on 4.19 kernel when using NFS mount. I found the bug report for that one and they said it was fixed in 5.1 or similar. Beware they were talking about that particular bug. Because as the parent comment says it is architectural issue that can't just be "fixed". It's a whack-a-mole. Developers need to be careful on all the call sites to avoid it. FUSE, NFS, CIFS code is all susceptible to it (and to my horror I've bitten by every single one of them several times in the past).
inetknght 6y ago
I've always found it to be a software problem. There's a lot of software that inhibits the computer from sleeping. I use Synergy to use a single keyboard/mouse across multiple computers. It also seems to completely inhibit sleep in whatever computer is running a client. Then there's shit like Discord or Firefox or Steam. Any time you run a full screen app or play music, the OS seems to think "oh hey you're playing a game" and then inhibits sleep.
yetihehe 6y ago
My HP laptop with windows and other desktop with windows both have BIG troubles with waking up. Typically after I accidentally put them to sleep, I have to somehow restart them, otherwise they wake up to black screen. For me, sleeping in windows never worked right, I'm always disabling it on new installs.
rescbr 6y ago
Mainly driver issues. I have once solved AMDGPU not waking up from hibernation just by compiling the driver into the kernel. The AMDGPU modules weren't loading somehow and even after spending some time, I couldn't fully debug the issue, as I'm missing an USB debug cable, the hardware didn't had Intel AMT serial over LAN and it lacked a real serial port.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > as I'm missing an USB debug cable, the hardware didn't had Intel AMT serial over LAN and it lacked a real serial port. You can try netconsole, a debug console over UDP/IP, implemented within the Linux kernel at a very low-level. It can keep sending logs over the network even if a kernel panic has occurred. If both netconsole and the Ethernet driver is built into the kernel, it's almost a serial-port substitute, a really handy debug tool for all kinds of black-screen-of-death issues. To debug an issue like that, I prefer connecting my workstation directly to the target (without routers and switches) and assign a static IP address on both ends. Netconsole for kernel space, SSH for userspace. The only thing it cannot do is collecting logs from the very earlyboot process. "The AMDGPU modules weren't loading" may or may not be an earlyboot problem, just try and see if you are lucky enough. https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/netconsole.html https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/networking/netconsole...
  - rescbr 6y ago
    I have tried netconsole, but the kernel froze right after PM restored memory from swap. IIRC it wasn't sending logs to my target machine at this boot stage, and I couldn't even get a flash of a kernel panic message to record it in slow motion on my phone. That's why I think only an USB debugger cable could help in this case. And to be fair, I'm just guessing the modules weren't loading, after they got compiled in, everything worked like a charm. Didn't debug it further, as this happened in the beginning of the pandemic and finding an USB cable not shipping from China, with reasonable costs, was impossible.
    - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
Why do people still use sleep? The lowest power saving modes are basically so great these days I can at least a couple of days out of them without any configuration whatsoever... On Windows many newer laptops don't even use actual "sleep" modes but rather simulate them with lower power active modes. Linux' problems with traditional sleep modes are only going to get worse as a consequence since manufacturers are going to abandon them. I'd stop using them ASAP.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  Yes. The core reason that linux is horrible in this area is that so few people care about sleep functionality. Sleep was developed when turning on/off a windows computer took minutes (boot, antivirus self-scan, updates to xyz, reboot, scan again etc). A modern linux machine boots in seconds. So the usefulness of sleep/hibernate modes on desktops/laptops has shrunk.
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    I dislike having to enter my extremely long decryption password every time I boot. Also, I have no idea how your computer boots in seconds. POST to UEFI is at least 3-5 seconds. Than I have to wait about 5-10 ish seconds after I type my password to decrypt my drive. Than it gets to OS selection screen which takes 3-5 seconds. Then it has to load all services after boot which takes about another 5-10 seconds before things get into a vaguely usable state. This versus 2 seconds to wake.
    - sandworm101 6y ago
      10+10+5=35 seconds, not minutes. As i said, sleep was developed when boot took minutes. So the motivation for this feature has been greatly diminished and is now less of a priority in the linux community.
      - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
        I don't believe you. This is a community that recompiles kernels for imaginary performance increases. Who would forgo practical increases in speed. And when someone says "seconds" the implication is that its at max around 5-9 seconds. I would be pretty pissed if a application that took "seconds" to boot actually took 59 seconds.
cat199 6y ago
as someone who also dealt with this and finally decided to just support a linux vendor (system76), i'm glad i did - the extra $$ is worthwhile & it feels much better knowing I supported an open-source friendly company
wyldfire 6y ago
I've had a couple of Dell XPS13 models over the past ~6 years. Linux on XPS13 for the most part 'just works'. Dell does ship a configuration of XPS13 with Ubuntu, and that's likely the biggest factor in its success. Plus: it's an attractive design, tiny bezels, super light.
pxeboot 6y ago
Sleep/wake has been 100% perfect on my X1 Carbon running Linux. Not a single issue since I got the device over a year ago. Battery drain is higher during sleep than a Mac though.
- alwaysontime 6y ago
  What distro are you running? What are your UPower settings?
smagoun 6y ago
OEMs perform rigorous stress-test cycles during development. For example they might require a machine to suspend+resume 1000 times in a row. This shakes out both OS + driver issues before they go to market. This level of rigor is important to avoid support calls + RMAs, which are expensive for the OEM. Many Linux drivers can't pass this level of rigor. Back when I used to care about this professionally (before 2014), video + wifi drivers were some of the worst culprits. Each variant of each chipset would need its own driver, and often those drivers needed tweaks for stability. Firmware implementations are (were?) also built + tested exclusively for Windows, and Linux is different enough that it can trigger untested/broken code paths or otherwise cause firmware to misbehave. Linux also has its own set of issues with ACPI + UEFI. Canonical, RedHat, etc have teams dedicated to enablement and testing for OEMs like Dell that ship computers with Linux. Back when I was involved, Canonical had 60+ people dedicated to this, and qualified hundreds of SKUs each year. Even then they don't cover all hardware. The fixes+workarounds those teams produce also take time to make their way upstream.
segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> Why does Linux have so much trouble sleeping and waking? To successfully suspend and resume a laptop, BIOS/UEFI and all drivers in the system, e.g. GPU, network, audio, USB, must have perfectly working power management code, a single bug in a driver is enough to prevent the entire system from sleeping. > [...] I've had Macs and PCs which don't seem to suffer from the same issue. Macs and PCs are fully tested by the vendor with all driver issues fixed before they are shipped - if they can't wake up, it's vendor's problem. On the other hand, if a laptop does not offer explicit Linux support, they are not tested at all. Linux developers are left on their own to figure it out. Worse, for some types of hardware, documentation is often lacking or nonexistent (OEMs have internal support from all device vendors). By saying "on their own", I really mean it - I've personally diagnosed and fixed a driver issue in the Linux kernel for my laptop, despite not being a kernel developer. If you have a popular machine, someone else will eventually fix it. But if you have an unique machine, sometimes there's really nobody that would do it for you. By far, the most notorious suspended/wakeup problem I've ever encountered was on a Windows tablet. Once the machine is suspended (ACPI S3), it's impossible to wakeup the machine again. After a long thread in the Linux bugzilla, ultimately the problem was identified - a developer disassembled the ACPI DSDT from BIOS, and discovered this scandal. Device (PWRB) { /* * Power Button Device. * _PRW: Power Resources for Wake. */ Name (_HID, EisaId ("PNP0C0C") Method (_PRW, 0, NotSerialized) { Return (Package (0x02) { 0x00, 0x00 }) } } Yes, it means what you think it meant, even if you don't speak ACPI. power_button_wakeup() { return 0; } There's literally no code in BIOS to wakeup the system from ACPI S3, the only instruction is "return 0", it's not implemented at all! Why does it work in Windows then? In Windows, it uses Microsoft InstantGo (ConnectedStandy) - a proprietary Microsoft standby mode with network connection (to allow smartphone-like "push notification"). The vendor decided that implementing industry standards are not necessary - you only need to implement Microsoft - and simultaneously, they also decided that, rather than simply saying ACPI S3 is not supported, you should define a broken ACPI S3 just to screw up everyone who is not using Microsoft Windows.
- gobblegobble2 6y ago
  Isn't InstantGo/ConnectedStandby basically the same thing as S0IX ACPI state? (according to this: https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/64867/trying-to-explain-the-surface-sleep-problems https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/microsoft-surface/64867/tryi...) It's seems doable with modern kernels: https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-linux https://01.org/blogs/qwang59/2018/how-achieve-s0ix-states-li.... Maybe you should give it a try.
bennyp101 6y ago
My Lenovo laptop with Pop_OS seems to work just fine - keyboards lights, wake/suspend/flippy screen to tablet mode. I get the impression more manufacturers are testing with linux nowadays, I think they realise that for a small (relative) amount of effort to just test the most obvious of things gives a good payoff, and the community will fix the quirks.
gtf21 6y ago
I haven't really had this experience. My Macs have had far more issues waking from sleep than my linux machine. I'm on System76 hardware though which is built for linux so could explain the driver issue mentioned in other comments.
fsflover 6y ago
Just find a laptop officially supported by Linux, just like you do with Windows and Mac.
- qz2 6y ago
  I've got one, a T495s, which is officially supported by Ubuntu and it still goes bananas occasionally.
  - fsflover 6y ago
    Everything is flawless on my Purism Librem 15. Upd: I don't see any mentioning of Linux on the official page of your laptop: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-series/T495s/p/22TP2TT495S https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-t-ser...
    - qz2 6y ago
      See: https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201906-27170 https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201906-27170
gravitas 6y ago
I've been using Linux on Dell laptops (various distributions and desktops, Precision / Inspiron) since the late 90s and it's always just sort of worked, had an IBM Thinkpad along the way as well. As another few comments mention, solid vendor firmware really seems to be a key factor and I prefer ATI/AMD gpu chips for their no-nonsense out of the box performance (I'm not a laptop gamer).
wheybags 6y ago
I am also extremenly frustrated by this. Even on my linux-only librem 13, it still occasionaly fails to start after a sleep. Suspend to disk is even worse. If there was a kernel dev out there accepting donations / patreon to fix this, I would be willing to sign up for a decent amount.
busterarm 6y ago
Works flawlessly on all of my thinkpads. In both Linux & BSDs.
- SoSoRoCoCo 6y ago
  Which Thinkpad model and Linux distro? I have a brand new Thinkpad Yoga 9i running a fresh Ubuntu 18.04 and I have to type "systemctl suspend|hibernate" because the power switch ALWAYS powers off. Annoying as heck.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    I've experienced no sleep issues on T490 and two Yogas (920 and some 500 series before that, can't remember exact model). Mostly elementary OS, though I've also used Ubuntu GNOME while that was a thing and Ubuntu + pure GNOME shell afterwards.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    I have a 7th Gen X1 Carbon and an X270. Arch & OpenBSD.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  Funny because I'm running a ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2, last night I put my laptop down, closed the lid, didn't connect a charger, came back an hour later and my battery was at only 1% and died after opening the lid. Running Linux 5.9, but it's been doing this on occasion for a while now.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    The X1 Extremes are less compatible. I mean you've got an Nvidia GPU, which is basically a no-go from my perspective.
tgflynn 6y ago
I think this must depend very much on the laptop. I have a Dell Inspiron that's been running Ubuntu for several years and I haven't noticed any significant issues with sleep/wake.
diffeomorphism 6y ago
> I've had Macs and PCs which don't seem to suffer from the same issue. Seem to, but windows also has these problems, for example https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/X1-Carbon-Sleep-Problems/td-p/2147929 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-Laptops/X1-Ca... https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=127945 https://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=127945
liveoneggs 6y ago
same as everyone else -- not enough Vitamin D
hpb42 6y ago
If you are running a Linux distribution that uses systemd, you can check how long it takes to boot with $ systemd-analyze # if you prefer a nice diagram: $ systemd-analyze plot > boot-sequence.svg My 6-year old laptop takes 7 seconds to boot (dual core i5, 8GB DDR3, SSD, ArchLinux). My previous computer used to take ~10 seconds do boot. If you don't have a bloated OS, there's no need for sleep/hibernate. I guess Kernel/driver developers have a computer that boots fast as well, so they don't care about optimizing sleep/hibernate functionality?
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  10 seconds to boot is 10 times longer than 1 second to wake up, and after waking up all my state is back, vs extra seconds required to start apps and restore them to their previous state on boot.
- mekster 6y ago
  > If you don't have a bloated OS, there's no need for sleep/hibernate.. What are you talking about? Sleep and hibernation can keep the state of the computer on next use. Glad you can boot quickly but that's not the point.
- mtsr 6y ago
  The biggest advantage to sleep/hibernate isn’t time to first work. It’s being able to resume exactly where you last were. I came from Linux laptops to MacBooks 6 years ago and that was such a big improvement. Not having to think about where I’m pausing my work. Even with the Linux laptop only failing to wake up about 20%. Although sometimes it’d fail to sleep and empty my battery and heat my backpack.
lxgr 6y ago
For what it's worth, macOS (at least on Intel) is quickly catching up. I've never had as many sleep problems on my Thinkpad running Ubuntu many years ago as I'm seeing on my fairly recent Intel MBP.
k__ 6y ago
My MBP doesn't sleep correctly anymore after I replaced the SSD. Either the battery is empty when I open it again, or it somehow shut itself down and boots anew with battery intact.
RIMR 6y ago
I mostly use ThinkPads as Linux workstations, and I was not aware that this was a big issue.
spoonjim 6y ago
Haha. As a parent of a one year old I definitely can empathize with sleeping and waking difficulties.
- microtherion 6y ago
  So your hypothesis is that after 30 years, Linux is still experiencing teething problems?
jokethrowaway 6y ago
To simplify, the hardware is sending some ACPI signals which tell the laptop to wake up. For some reason, sometimes they fire when you don't want them to fire. Incidentally I had this very problem when using Mac Os on a Macbook 2015 and I couldn't do much about it. When I started using linux on said Macbook at least I could disable ACPI signals. The first thing I do in any linux laptop I own is disable all ACPI signals and setup a script to do so at every boot. Then you just need to have a DE to suspend after X amount of inactivity (often the default) and you're set. Sure, you won't turn off/on your laptop by closing the lid, but it should work fine, turning on / off with power button.
tartoran 6y ago
I just had this problem a few moments ago under Ubuntu. After resuming from suspended mode, the laptop's touchpad doesn't register the leftclick. Not being able to access browser I restarting the system. This is happening intermittently without any clear pattern
tpoacher 6y ago
"You're using it wrong" ~Steve Jobs.
MarkusWandel 6y ago
I run a number of Linux laptops ranging from 10 to 3 years old (i.e. nothing bleeding edge) and except for one long retired ancient one, and one in current use, suspend/resume has been flawless (hibernate not so much; if the kids leave one unplugged and it auto-hibernate as the battery runs low, it seems about 50/50 success whether it emerges from hibernation in a usable state). Now what is not flawless: There are any number of ACPI things that, if set, will immediately re-wake the computer once suspended. The following script is on my current problematic one as /usr/lib/systemd/system-sleep/wakefix.pl #!/usr/bin/perl open(FILE,"/proc/acpi/wakeup"); while(<FILE>) { chomp; if(/enabled/) { ($a,$b) = split / /; system("echo $a >/proc/acpi/wakeup"); } } [Sorry about the mangled formatting] It just turns off everything that is enabled to wake the machine up. As this list happens not to include the power button - the only thing I want to be able to wake the laptop up - this works fine. I've never experimented with auto-suspend on lid close and auto-resume on open; maybe that's what's more troublesome. Another thing that's not suspend-resume, but nonetheless annoying - if the machine is running an SDL fullscreen thing (Tuxpaint) or if the MATE desktop has a pop-up menu open, the power button won't suspend the computer, because something intercepts the button press. My experience with suspend/resume on Desktop machines has been 100% bad, on the other hand. Usually they suspend just fine, but don't resume to a usable state.
- rektide 6y ago
  Your experiences matches my own closely. My desktop machines have done as well though! Suspend/resume to memory and to disk have been exceedingly reliable on every machine I've touched for a decade for me. On my old Dell convertible laptop, the wifi would only turn on every other time it woke up. The machines waking up is a real problem. I have `HandleLidSwitch=ignore` in systemd's logind.conf[1]. I see there are other options though, which I might also try setting to ignore. I too sometimes have unexpected wakeups. I'd like to learn more about how to debug these. I've asked twice on IRC & gotten no reply. My backup plan has been to write a daemon to make the system go to sleep, and whenever it wakes up, put it back to sleep, unless I "disarm" the daemon. I'm in a fairly low-visibility environment now though- I feel like I should work the problem some, fix whatever is going wrong, rather than hack around, but I have not been successful at figuring out second steps in debugging systemd daemons, once `systemd status` & upping the logging level falls short. I too have problems with some desktop things intercepting my power button, which again, I wish I had better visibility in to. I don't know other than trial & error to figure out who might be grabbing the input devices. [1] https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf.htmlloginctl https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/logind.conf....
api 6y ago
Just punt on the problem. Get a good quality high performance ARM64 chip, pair it with a larger than typical battery, and build a laptop that never actually shuts off unless the battery charge falls below 10% and the lid is closed. This would be a better machine all around anyway. You could close it with ssh sessions open and open it again and they're still open. You could run P2P software in the background and it would never have to re-bootstrap. You could connect to it remotely to access files any time. Computers that turn off all the time suck.
mcv 6y ago
This is not specific to Linux. Windows also constantly wakes up whenever it don't want it to. A lot more often than 20%. It's incredibly annoying. Sometimes I put a PC to sleep, and it will wake up a minute later. Sometimes it wakes up in the middle of the night to spin up its fans. Laptops I put to sleep without being hooked up to power will have their battery drained next time I want to use them. I can't imagine any OS being worse at sleeping than Windows.
- riggsdk 6y ago
  Check your USB devices - they can wake up your PC. You can disable this on a per-device level in the device manager. Find the device, open it's properties and find the setting under the "Power management" tab. A windows PC can also be woken up by "Wake-on-LAN" magic packets sent to your network card. Go to your network adapters and open it's properties. Press the 'Configure' button. Go to the Advanced tab and find "Wake on Magic Packet" and turn it off.
- mmwelt 6y ago
  I found it to be my USB mouse. I'd already disabled the option to wake the PC in the mouse device, but then found out that you also have to do that with a separate "keyboard" device[1]. But ever since disabling the option on both devices, things have become a lot better. [1] https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-power/windows-10-cannot-disable-the-mouse-from-waking/706340c2-1fcc-4cd0-b747-c736d8a31b34 https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10...
dyingkneepad 6y ago
Crappy drivers. Is there a chance you've been using some device that fails to suspend? Are you using NVidia or other proprietary drivers? My suggestion is that you run Linux on laptops that everybody else buys. These days the famous ones are Dell XPS and Lenovo Thinkpad. Also, please make sure you report your issues. Regressions on S3 are often common. Unfortunately developers lack properly testing S3, because it's difficult to test. Oh, and forget Hibernation (S4). It's crap and it's just never going to work fine. It's not even worth it since the machines boot fast.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  I actually run a year old model Lenovo ThinkPad and the latest stable kernel. I mean it's mostly good at hibernating, but it's just not solid like other systems I've used. You're right in saying that it's better on these systems with later kernels, I do remember a time when I was younger and buying the wrong laptop without suspend support though :)
BruiseLee 6y ago
For me, my Mac Mini (running OS X) is the worst. It just wakes up whenever it wants to. Usually in the middle of the night.
cyrialize 6y ago
My T530 wakes up and sleeps just fine. I don't have hibernate set up. I know there's a command line command I can do, but I also know there's a way to "enable" it somehow so that it appears as an option in the shutdown menu. It probably works so well on my T530 since it's an 8 year old thinkpad.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
Check syslog, often there's either a PCI device (e.g. an ethernet card) that wakes up the machine immediately after it goes to sleep, or a process refuses to freeze/stop. ACPI wakeup problems can be fixed using /proc/acpi/wakeup, there you'll also see which devices can wake up the machine and you can disable them one by one to find out where your problem lies (though syslog should already tell you what woke up the machine or kept it from suspending). That said I haven't had a single suspend/wakeup issue with my Linux machine in years, I even find Windows considerably more buggy and unstable in this respect.
smallstepforman 6y ago
I triple boot my MacBookPro with OSX, Ubuntu 20.04 and Haiku. Ubuntu is unusable with the fan noise and low battery life. Funnily, Haiku has best battery life of all 3.
rwmj 6y ago
Choosing the right hardware can help. I've had Lenovo Thinkpads from work and I never have a problem with suspend or hibernate.
- agapon 6y ago
  [This is just for laughs] I also never had problems with suspend. Resume is a different story, though.
neolog 6y ago
With all the experts in here, I might as well post my suspend/wake issue: Here's my kernel log from today's a failed wake-from-suspend. https://bpa.st/VIPQ https://bpa.st/VIPQ Linux 5.4.81 with amdgpu I notice in particular: kernel: amdgpu 0000:09:00.0: [drm:amdgpu_ring_test_helper [amdgpu]] *ERROR* ring gfx test failed (-110) kernel: BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 0000000000000008
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  > Linux beta 5.4.81 with amdgpu I don't know anything specific about AMDGPU, but if I were you, the first step I'd always try is to reproduce it in the latest mainline kernel, it's currently 5.9. Check the documentation of your distribution to see how can you get one. Often a partial fix exists in a newer kernel, and you may be able to identify and debug a different part of the issue.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  A web search shows the problem has already been "git bisected" by users on Bugzilla with a workaround [0]. And according to > Ahzo 2019-10-11 18:33:10 UTC > bisection between these two, while backporting 533aed278afe on every step, lead to commit 2a91f272e34c, which failed to boot and thus had to be skipped, and commit e0128efb08b3d628d767ec8578e77cdd7ecc8f81 looks like a likely root cause. Indeed, adding 'return 0;' at the beginning of uvd_v6_0_enc_ring_test_ib makes the problem unreproducible, even on the latest linux 5.4-rc2. And, > Ahzo 2019-10-11 18:37:48 UTC > By the way, some of the kernel NULL pointer dereferences, that can happen after a resume failure, also happen always on shutdown. Attached patch prevents them. Do you know how to build a kernel? I suggest you to build Linux 5.4 (you can avoid reconfiguring the kernel by using /proc/config.gz) with the code workaround (adding 'return 0;' at the beginning of uvd_v6_0_enc_ring_test_ib) applied, and see whether it fixes your problem. You should also check the NULL pointer patch and see whether it's already included in the source code by manual inspection, if not, also apply the patch. If it fixes your problems, report it to the Bugzilla thread. Nevertheless, I still recommend you to try reproducing it in Linux 5.9 first and see whether you can reproduce the original problem. The comments in Bugzilla suggests that the latest kernel has already fixed the issue. > Alex Deucher 2020-10-01 14:59:58 UTC > The original issue reported in this bug was fixed long ago. If Linux 5.9 fixes it, good. If not, see whether the error messages are different. If so, you should chase the new issue instead of the original issue. --- [0] https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204241 https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204241
tkainrad 6y ago
Surprised to see this. I have never had any problems with sleep. Used plenty of distros and machines. Hibernate has been a bit tricky for me. But a few months ago I have finally found a solution that has since worked on all Ubuntu 18.04 and later machines I have tried it on. Described in detail in a blog post at https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-workstation/#hibernation https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-workstation/#hib... Commands and config there can be copy-pasted and should hopefully fix any hibernation problems. It depends on explicitly creating a large enough swapfile and setting the UUID and offset in the grub configuration.
dgrabla 6y ago
Strategy: "use couple of years old Thinkpad". Tons of linux devs use thinkpads and a couple of years are needed for all userland / driver patches to land at your favorite distro. It worked so far for me with the x40, x230 & t470s.
mike_ivanov 6y ago
I concur. It is usually possible to get sleep/hibernate working after tinkering with video/wifi driver settings, but it almost never works out of the box.
jdoliner 6y ago
Does anyone every refer to these problems as their Linux install having insomnia? Or is that just me?
cassepipe 6y ago
The problem I have on a six year old laptop running Linux is that, only sometimes, when powered off, everything closes normally, systemd exits but then the laptop never goes off. It has happened to me on other laptops. Not a big deal but I really wonder why.
tubularhells 6y ago
It works on my computer. Are you using Gnome? That might be your problem. Try KDE. It works.
asciimov 6y ago
> I've had Macs and PCs which don't seem to suffer from the same issue. It's funny, I don't have a problem with sleep/wake on my 6.5 year old HP laptop under Linux but on Windows 10 it can't seem to ever stay asleep. It loves to wake up at random times and stay awake, even when it is only on battery. With that said, Linux can't successfully manage the laptops P-States. I have to force the system to just not manage them under Linux because it will randomly lockup.
- FreeFull 6y ago
  Windows 10 has a setting where it'll wake up the machine to run Windows Update, and it's on by default. Perhaps if you turn that off, the random wakeups will stop.
  - asciimov 6y ago
    I'll double check that. This is an intermittent issue, across multiple installs of windows 10, and I'm almost certain it's an issue created by one of the laptops drivers. Fortunately, I don't normally live in Windows, so I have little desire to spend much time hunting down and fixing the problem.
    - fart32 6y ago
      Turn off wake-up by alarm in BIOS, if you can. Windows just wakes up whenever it wants and if you, somehow, manage to make it stop in the settings, it only works till the next update. At least that was my experience.
nedsma 6y ago
I figured out the best way to deal with WiFi and sound issues in Linux is to run it as a VM guest. With plenty RAM and fast SSDs it runs more than acceptably well.
mvanbaak 6y ago
Why? Developers ;) they have exactly this problem ;) Ps: this is not a serious answer
bamboozled 6y ago
I am the OP, I should've mentioned when I originally posted that I _am_ using a Lenovo ThinkPad, X1 Extreme Gen 2 to be precise. I love the laptop a lot, but the sleeping isn't as dependable as my Mac was. Overall the laptop has performed well running Linux, although I must say, the Nvidia GPU is a massive let down from a driver / support perspective. I'll never buy a Laptop with an Nvidia GPU again so long as I run Linux or probably ever because they treat open source like crap. In the interest of giving a fair review, I'll explain why this laptop falls short with an Nvidia GPU (in my view), it might even explain why the sleep issues: Basically the USB-C ports are hardwired directly to the Nvidia GPU, this is so the GPU drives external monitors. Which is fine, but what's not fine is that the GPU must be on an enabled permanently to use an external monitor. If I turn off the GPU, the external monitors can't be used. I can turn off the GPU by changing modes (dramatically improving battery time and life), but this means I need to go change my X configuration, login and log out. So either having good battery life, or working at my desk is a compromise, because it's highly inconvenient to change settings and reboot. It basically lets the entire machine down when it comes to functioning as a Laptop. Apparently there is talk the drivers might support the offloading behaviour one might expect in the future. To be able to drive external monitors just using the integrated graphics. The HDMI port might not be hardwired, but I'm not really interested in using that as I like the USB-C port because I use my monitor as a USB Hub / docking station.
vlan0 6y ago
Huh, been running Fedora on my Latitude 7280 for years without any sleep/wake issues. Starting to feel like I might be lucky.
billylindeman 6y ago
If you want good support for this I recommend getting a lenovo. My X1 yoga 4 has been the perfect linux laptop. Sleep wake works flawlessly
boatsie 6y ago
Sleep or hibernate? I have a Lenovo t480 on Ubuntu 18 and it sleeps/wakes ok, but hibernate refuses to work. So I’m fine being off AC for hours, but not day(s).
tinus_hn 6y ago
There is a standardized way you can tell devices to go to sleep or hibernate. This is implemented by the firmware core. The people who write that firmware code test a lot to make sure it works when the device is programmed the way Windows programs it. If Linux turns out to use the device in a different way the procedure is untested and often this firmware is very buggy which is why it isn’t reliable.
Codazoa 6y ago
Strange. Of all my computers it is only my 2 windows machines that have trouble sleeping and waking. All of my linux machines sleep no problem and only wake up when I have scheduled it. I even have them set up to receive sleep and wake commands from my phone from anywhere. Windows doesn't play nice with that type of setup either. My windows computers will wake up less than 5 minutes after going to sleep but I've left my linux systems on sleep for days and sometimes weeks at a time with no problem at all.
alexeiz 6y ago
My experience is exactly the opposite. Windows and Linux are installed on my laptop in dualboot mode. Linux goes to sleep and wakes up just fine 100% reliably. Windows, however, uses this "connected standby" or "modern sleep" mode by default that on multiple occasions lead to waking up while the laptop was in my backpack and then draining the battery to zero. I got fed up with this and decided to disable this shitty sleep and go back to normal S3 sleep mode. It's not so easy on Windows 10 anymore! It took me a couple of hours but I finally found a solution. And S3 is now the default sleep mode instead of the modern sleep. Looks like the sleep mode is fixed. However! My laptop began to go to sleep as soon as I activated the lock screen even if it was connected to power. Wtf! More hours spent on searching for solution (other people experience this issue as well). It turns out there is a hidden (!) power option. You need to unhide it by changing the registry and then disable it. Now my laptop when connected to power still spontaneously goes to sleep, but it happens after 20 minutes or so. I don't know what other option I need to change. I just can't spend any more time researching this crap.
dpc_pw 6y ago
Your laptop manufacturer doesn't care so it's buggy. Buy a Thinkpad, Zenbook, Dell XPS, System76 laptop or some model known to have good Linux support next time. Can't remember any problems like this in the last decade, but I always, always research Linux compatibility before buying any hardware.

Datenstrom 6y ago

> manufacturers don't care about Linux support This is why I have been using System76 personally for the last 5 years, since I first found out about them when given one by an employer. The first linux box I have had that didn't have little problems like that. Disclaimer: not affiliated in any way, just a happy customer for work and play.

nicholasjarnold 6y ago
Chiming in to add an anecdotal data point in support of the parent's comment. I too own a System76 laptop which is running their drivers and PopOS (Debian and Ubuntu derivative). Sleep/wake works well.
- gcthomas 6y ago
  Any machine covered by Ubuntu certified hardware seems to work very well by default, including my work Dell XPS13. Sleep/wake happens flawlessly.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    I had two dell XPSes in 2015/16, one of which shipped with Ubuntu, and they were by far the worst compatibility experience I've ever had with a Linux laptop. I loved the hardware, but my God was the firmware garbage.
  - lliamander 6y ago
    My Dell Precision 5530 for work is kinda meh - by which I mean it works most of the time, but the fact that it doesn't work every time is fairly big deal at this point. My personal ThinkPad E495 has pretty much flawless driver support. Granted, I'm running different distros (Ubuntu on the Dell, Solus on the ThinkPad) but the fact that the Dell Precision is certified specifically for Ubuntu is pretty disappointing.
nextos 6y ago
Most machines with decent drivers also have flawless sleep. This includes NUCs, many Thinkpads, etc. In general, Linux runs really well if you filter hardware a bit ahead of purchase. For example, an all Intel machine with Intel wireless card will rarely give any trouble.
- Technically 6y ago
  This is true in terms of software state, but the power management is often pretty bad even with fully "supported" hardware like thinkpad, xps developer edition, etc. To be fair this seems to be a problem shared with Windows.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  The child comment is dead for some reason so I can't reply, but he's right: it's important to note that filtering can be difficult, bexause even laptops that nominally support Linux (or ship with it!) can have terrible support. The Dell XPS developer editions (I bought two, one for work and one for home) are the worst Linux compatibility experience I've ever had. Amazing hardware, but shame on me for believing the line that Dell had turned over a new leaf and was competent now.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    I bought one with Ubuntu installed, and have had a few small problems. I.e., power remaining is slightly optimistic: it shut down this morning with 3% showing. Also it seems to have more trouble connecting to paired bluetooth devices than my phone has. I like it well enough to live with these issues. Is there something awful coming soon?
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      I mentioned this in my other comment but should have mentioned it here too: I got these in 2015/16, so I can't comment on what the line is like now. My main point was that shipping with Linux is no guarantee that they'll work well, as ludicrous as that sounds.
    - danielscrubs 6y ago
      I’m not an electrical engineer but batteries don’t give perfect output constantly so your three percent might have been correct. It’s an hard problem and if you want it to be “it should always be able to go to zero” then they will just increase the margin of when to shut down and people will wonder where their battery life went.
mattanimation 6y ago
yeah System 76 is a solid laptop, granted they do maintain PopOS which is the default OS on their systesm. so they do indeed have more custom hardware support which is why it's such a good marriage.
buzzdenver 6y ago
Writing this on a System 76 laptop running the latest PopOS and I wish I had the same experience. Sleep/wake works if I explicitly put my machine into sleep, but not if I just close the screen.
- andrewshadura 6y ago
  It's just a matter of a user setting. It does not necessarily mean something doesn't work. I, for example, hate automatic suspect on lid close.
Karellen 6y ago
My last laptop was a System76, and my current is a Purism Librem 15. Also no problems with suspend/resume.
rufus_foreman 6y ago
I've got a System 76 laptop, and it's the best laptop I've owned so far out of the Windows, Mac, and Linux laptops I've had. But it still won't wake up from sleeping sometimes, maybe once a month. Had a Dell XPS before that, it was way worse on the same issue. With MacBooks, I didn't have that issue as much with personal machines, but I mostly used them for travel. I've had pretty bad issues with work MacBooks. Love my System 76, but there's still work to be done there.

bobince 6y ago

They don't even necessarily care about Windows support. Upgrade to a new version that doesn't quite work the same with the hacks in their cobbled-together drivers, and you're quickly in the same boat as the Linux users.

SteveNuts 6y ago
This hasn't been my experience with Windows in the last 5 years. Truth be told it's pretty stable by now and for me, issues like that are rare. Even things like working with external docking stations are pretty seamless nowadays.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  Beh, my laptop (MSI GS65) has trouble waking up from sleep on windows too. When putting it to sleep on linux it always comes back up, but I have to reboot to get wifi back. On windows wifi comes back, but the ethernet port needs to be disabled & reenabled in the control panel to work. Laptops suck.
  - jtolly710 6y ago
    Hey I'm also running a GS65 (First Ubuntu - now PopOs), the Wifi is frustrating, but I found double-tapping (2x [FN+F10]) in quick succession would bring the radios back up. Have you ever gotten the native HDMI port to work in linux?
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      > Hey I'm also running a GS65 (First Ubuntu - now PopOs), the Wifi is frustrating, but I found double-tapping (2x [FN+F10]) in quick succession would bring the radios back up. oh wow, okay I'll definitely try that haha > Have you ever gotten the native HDMI port to work in linux? Yes, with the nvidia drivers it works fine
  - jbverschoor 6y ago
    Laptops don’t suck. My MacBook rarely reboots.. only in case of system updates. Sleep/wake up works perfect
    - wutbrodo 6y ago
      This is also true of every ThinkPad Linux system I've used over the last fifteen years, as the ThinkPad is as close to first-party Linux hardware as exists. It's also true for the majority of Windows laptops in the MacBook price range, I assume. I'd also assume that Hackintoshes don't work as smoothly as you describe, which feeds right into the parent commenter's complaint. The parent commenter just has higher standards than you: either that software and hardware are relatively easily decoupled and should be, or that laptop manufacturers should competently implement the standards they claim to, or even just that he's never worked at a company whose product was as poorly-made as almost every laptop's compatibility software.
- 1996 6y ago
  > This hasn't been my experience with Windows in the last 5 years. Truth be told it's pretty stable by now and for me, issues like that are rare. Good sleep on windows has only returned recently. After years of great sleep on Windows 7, there have been massive changes following the introduction of ACPI S0. Case in point: I got a nice laptop for classes like 4 years ago and it did NOT implement either S3 or S4 mode, which caused a MASSIVE problem in Linux. I found out about the issue on mailing list: the bios simply didn't implement at all this part of ACPI, instead of exposing the hooks based on the OS detection. It was to reduce problems in theory, but it brought many more in practice. Connected standby (S0idle) was very flaky on Windows 10, and very often the laptop would eat the battery overnight instead of going to sleep.
  - WorldMaker 6y ago
    I don't think a lot of Windows users notice when hardware has things like missing ACPI states because Windows since Vista tends to treat a lot of drivers as potentially "sleep hostile" and does all sorts of crazy tricks to paper over bad driver behavior, including sometimes hard shutting off/rebooting hardware on tough timeout limits (depending on hardware class) and fakes sleep/suspend as best as it can given whatever limits it comes across. The few times I've ever skimmed the ACPI/Power Events event logs in Windows, it's an amazing glimpse into some real wild goings on that rarely seem noticeable from a user level, but clearly indicate that drivers are as much of a mess as ever and Windows does a lot of work to make it look like things are fine, everything is fine, and system is peacefully sleeping (as hardware gets kicked under the table for acting up). I'm not sure if there are direct lessons there for Linux driver handling as Microsoft has huge test labs that do forward these sorts of event logs to the hardware manufacturers and is in a position to expect at least some of them to do better next time (either next driver update or next hardware refresh).
- olyjohn 6y ago
  This is how I feel about Linux on my laptop. Haven't had any sleep or dock issues in a long time. I think that PCs are much better overall about power management than they used to be. I think most of that has to do with the hardware vendors, and less to do with Windows or Linux. Macs have always nailed it. When I worked at a computer store like 15 years ago, people would bring in their Macs, open up the lid and it would wake instantly after being asleep in someone's bag for 2 weeks and still have a 90% charge. Any Windows PC in that era would have run until it overheated and melted, or ran out of battery, whichever happened first.
- munchbunny 6y ago
  I don't think any of our individual experiences will say much on this topic. It clearly works well enough for some and not for others. My desktop (custom built) refuses to go to sleep when I'm booted into Linux. Straight up just wakes itself immediately. Over in Windows land I've had this issue on a regular basis with a Thinkpad that keeps waking itself up. I've had this issue occasionally on a Surface Book 2, I suspect due to a finicky monitor attached to the dock. I've had this issue pretty much never on a first gen Surface Book attached to the same dock. Go figure.
  - shock 6y ago
    > My desktop (custom built) refuses to go to sleep when I'm booted into Linux. Straight up just wakes itself immediately. It's probably a device that it's waking the computer up. In my case it was a mouse. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389048 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25389048 for a solution.
- cuddlybacon 6y ago
  If I let my Windows desktop go to sleep by being idle, it works perfectly fine. If I select the sleep option in the start menu it probably won't wake back up and I'll have to unplug it for about 10 minutes to get it to boot again.
- cooljacob204 6y ago
  Every once in a while there will be a week or two where I have issues with my pc not sleeping. Previous causes have been sound drivers, chrome, steam, joysticks, some unknown that an update fixes.
epx 6y ago
Only Macs sleep reasonably correctly, and even they have issues. In my Macbook Air, Wi-Fi is the first victim after "n" cycles so I need to reboot it.
- waffletower 6y ago
  Indeed. External display detection often bugs out after sleep in Mac OS.
- fortran77 6y ago
  That's too bad. My Lenovo Yoga with Windows 10 works perfectly. Never a glitch.
swiley 6y ago
I know people where windows update removed their GPU driver leaving them with only VESA graphics. They had no idea what happened or how to fix it.
vagrantJin 6y ago
> They don't even necessarily care about Windows support. I doubt this is true. Windows = computing for a good over 80% of humanity. Not markets, not regions. Humanity.

cultus 6y ago

One particular issue is that nobody actually implements the ACPI power management protocol correctly.

vlovich123 6y ago
Then the problem is with the protocol no? Seems like an architectural issue that the Linux community needs to spearhead with HW vendors to resolve. Good standards that reduce sources of error are the only antidote to vertical integration approaches that big tech is going down.
- zhengyi13 6y ago
  I think even the best standards can have ambiguities. SHOULD, MAY, etc. Assuming you're not running a Mac (where the vendor controls the entire stack), you've got your OS vendor, your MB vendor, your every-single-external-device-vendor... ... and the interactions of all this hardware mediated through the OS, its drivers, and the reading comprehension and the development pressures of every single dev who's worked on any part of this stack. There's an awful lot of room for ambiguities there. Protocol definition at this level is kind of a collaborative lurching towards consensus.
- cultus 6y ago
  Yeah, it seems most tech standards are design-by-committee disasters.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  > problem is with the protocol I wouldn't assume so. Is there a problem with the spec for using your turn signals while driving? And yet...
  - vlovich123 6y ago
    I’ve implemented a lot of protocols. The more complex a protocol is and the more moving parts, the harder it is. The fundamental challenge is complexity. Understanding how to build this stuff is a mix between figuring out which complexity to expose to “the masses” (masses here being other developers) and what else to hide in abstractions or better tooling. I think the market would look very different if senior Linux kernel maintainers (including Torvalds) got together and said “this is the Linux power save API - implement it”. The challenge is that the same HW powers Windows (and used to power Macs and probably still does to at least some degree). No protocol worth a damn can handle that much variability. So then the question is can the firmware and driver code be given less to be responsible for rather than more and then let the kernel make all the decision making power. The problem with ACPI (at least as I understand it from reading about it superficially - I’ve never read the spec itself) is that decision making is extremely interdependent with the kernel ultimately not being fully in charge of decisions. For example, a simple design for something like this is defining ACPI-lite that handles 80% of the hardware that ACPI currently supports but that drastically simplified the mental model and lets the kernel implement all the common logic with the driver and firmware not being responsible for anything more than translating kernel commands to the HW. Then you leave ACPI for the remaining 20% of HW that doesn’t fit in the bucket but you also make the warning verbose (you’re running legacy ACPI device X - this may degrade your battery power / prevent sleep wake from working effectively). If they can also get Windows kernel engineers on board then you would have a compelling market forcing function on HW makers/driver writers to simplify their code.
    - adrianmonk 6y ago
      I'm not negating that complexity is a problem. I'm saying that there are two problems, complexity and incentives. If you want someone to do something, then you must make it realistic for them to do it, and you must make sure that they have some reason to bother. When shopping for computer components, do people research whether that graphics card or USB hub behaves well in power saving modes? And if they wanted to, do they have easy access to that information? If not, then manufacturers will probably not prioritize it. They will prioritize whatever goes into the purchasing decision instead. Though it is good in a way to know that there are specific things that could be improved on the technical side, because it means there's the possibility that things could be better. Random thought: maybe some organization whose mission is energy conservation (government like Energy Star in the US or nonprofit) would be willing to fund the software revamp. Maybe in combination with people who pay data center electric bills.

vetinari 6y ago

Sleep and hibernate have nothing to do with drivers. They are done via ACPI. ACPI is implemented by the device vendor, is part of BIOS/UEFI and is notoriously buggy.

1996 6y ago
Some manufacturer selectively implement ACPI (ex: no S3 or S4, only S0 for connected standby) making things worse
Overdr0ne 6y ago
No. Linux drivers are supposed to implement runtime_pm callbacks. These are called based on the usage counter of those devices. ACPI is an Intel/microsoft standard for power state definition with spotty compliance. How and when you put those devices into whatever power state, ACPI or not is dictated by those callbacks. Bugs seem to most often occur when you turn off something when it is still being used cuz someone failed to claim it or released it too soon. Also asic bugs in their definitions of their power states.
- dyingkneepad 6y ago
  runtime_pm is generally for runtime suspend (Intel calls it s0ix) instead of S3 suspend. You can implement S3 suspend using the same callbacks as your runtime_pm callbacks, but you don't need to. The runtime_pm framework is for when applications are still running but the device goes to sleep. In S3 suspend first every single user space application freezes, then the drivers go to sleep. S3 is much easier to implement.
  - Overdr0ne 6y ago
    I think ideally all pm would be controlled by the runtime_pm and qos frameworks. You then don't need to define explicit power states like 'sleep' or 'suspend', you instead simply use what you need for a given performance spec and naturally use a minimum of power. I think that is the ultimate plan
    - dyingkneepad 6y ago
      It's not that simple. There's a lot of predicting the future when it comes to power management. When you put things to sleep in order to save power you add latency, because waking up the hardware and restoring its state takes a long time. It's all tradeoffs, and "use minimum power" is taking the slider and shifting it all the way to one side.
usr1106 6y ago
> Sleep and hibernate have nothing to do with drivers. That sounds like a brave statement to me. Without knowing many details I believe that drivers can block the system from hibernating when they don't cooperate correctly. I am absolutely sure during wakeup the driver needs to cooperate correctly. There are numerous cases that some device does no longer work correctly after wakeup. I doubt that ACPI alone can be blamed for all of the issues, even if I don't like the close source nature of ACPI. Is there any open source approach to ACPI? Not that I'd expect to work better right away. But you know whom to blame. In the worst case yourself for not starting to fix it.
_notreallyme_ 6y ago
Well, there is a driver for ACPI. I have the vague souvenir of Linus Torvalds calling BIOS/UEFI dev "monkeys on crack" or something along the line...
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Yes but on top of that Linus had a very "stern taking to" kernel developers who would fix it for one model but break it for others, so has made sure developers wouldn't break each others code
kodah 6y ago
> Sleep and hibernate have nothing to do with drivers. I think this is halfway accurate. Drivers are part of the problem and firmware is the other. Other folks in this thread have gone on to explain it better than I can, so I'll just point you to them. That said, I think things like the new firmware update manager that connects device creators to the Linux ecosystem so they can provide smooth and regular updates to users are pivotal to solving these kinds of problems. I've had less problems on PopOS due to this. Firmware updates have at times completely eradicated the more usual problems I experienced with Linux, which in an uneducated guess, probably boiled down to interoperability.
kinleyd 6y ago
I remember trying to set up a PVR and getting pretty far using mpv and at. The system worked as long as it was left on. rtcwake was the bridge that was too far: Upon waking, recording started but ACPI errors occurred soon after, culminating with ivtv reporting the encoder had died. I never got past that stage, but it was a worthy try - and I learned that some bugs ain't never going to be fixed. Edit: It was an Arch setup from about 5 years ago.
dyingkneepad 6y ago
Driver developer here. The sentences above are just plain wrong. Drivers have to implement callbacks for suspend. A driver needs to make sure it saves all of its state before the suspend, and then it needs to make sure it restores all of its state after resume. S3 suspend often kills the state of every register that was previously written.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago

35 seconds is still kinda ridiculous when you consider the ludicrous speed of modern computers. If every cycle of a single core of a 3Ghz processor were a subjective second, then in that 35 seconds the core experiences a subjective 3327 years.

xboxnolifes 6y ago
Half of the 35 seconds in this case is from decrypting a drive and menu screens from having multiples OSs. Removing that and using fast boot BIOS options could easily drop this under 10 seconds.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  And time waiting for the wifi to reconnect. That is an entirely different wait cycle.
- AshamedCaptain 6y ago
  Yes, my desktop usually boots in around 10 seconds. Or at least feels like 10 seconds; no more. In fact it takes more time for it to wake than to boot from full power off, albeit that says more about Linux sleep/wake support than anything else. But my point is that, for most of the time, I just leave it on. It consumes almost the same power sleeping that fully on, at idle.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  You say that like the decryption steps should be slow. The decryption is orders of magnitude faster than reading from the drive in the first place. And 10 seconds is still nearly 1000 subjective years. A Commodore 64 boots faster than the CRT can warm up and, while certainly doing less in the process, does it with a 1Mhz processor. Which, for reference, is 3000 times slower than our single core 3Ghz example not even accounting for CPI=>IPC inversion. Computers are ludicrously fast, but we've apparently worked hard as an industry to slow them down as much as possible even for the simplest of tasks.
  - AshamedCaptain 6y ago
    Seriously, why would you complain about this these days? In 2012, I was _impressed as hell_ when the SSD MacBook Air would fully boot OSX in 1 minute 30 seconds, being used to computers taking minutes to start and then spending even more minutes being unusable with the HDD thrashing like hell. These days my Linux desktop computer boots in around 10 seconds (much faster than either Windows or macOS on similar hardware, but at least on windows the boot time improvements have been incredible too). My desktop literally boots in less time than it takes for my DP monitor to power on from zero and start displaying frames. This is the wrong year to complain about boot time. I remember being on an airplane with no wifi and a brand new MacBook Air and spent most of the time idly turning it off and on, since I was really impressed :) . And today that > 1 minute boot time I would consider crap.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      > Seriously, why would you complain about this these days? Because we have ludicrously fast computers, but they feel slow. I have an period appropriate XP laptop in my office and every time I have to pull it out and use it I'm momentarily shocked by how responsive it is compared to modern OSs. We should be better than this, but our industry sucks at its job and I'm kinda sick of it. > These days my Linux desktop computer boots in around 10 seconds [...] > My desktop literally boots in less time than it takes for my DP monitor to power on from zero and start displaying frames. Your monitor takes more than 10 seconds to power on, and you seriously don't think this is ridiculous? What the hell is it doing that could possible be taking that long?
      - AshamedCaptain 6y ago
        You claim that XP is snappy? Even on a 2020 machine VM, it still takes more time to boot that 10!
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        I've confused the argument here, because it is true that it does not have an impressive boot time. However, once booted it is significantly more responsive than any modern OS I've ever used.
giantrobot 6y ago
While CPUs are ridiculously fast, pretty much everything involved in booting a system involves a lot of polling or hard coded waits. Modern peripherals also contain only the barest of firmware in ROM and need the drivers to actually upload their operating firmware. No matter how many cores the CPU has or how fast they're clocked they're not going to make all that IO faster. They also can't run a hard coded 10ms sleep faster than 10ms. Even once you get into a booted kernel and PID 1 you're still going to wait on IO to get daemons running. If you've got services (in systemd parlance) waiting on Networking you can have totally variable wait periods depending on local network conditions. SSDs and parallel starting of daemons has improved boot times a lot over the past decade but there's still hard minimums just based on booting up low level crap before the kernel turns things over to PID 1.

halz 6y ago

Yes, ACPI DSDT being utterly broken seems to be a pretty common trip point for Linux suspend/sleep. For my Dell Precision 5510, I was able to patch[1] a missing device back into the DSDT, as well as 'fix' some thunderbolt port enumeration race condition. The hackintosh community was helpful in providing ACPI dumps from similar enough Dell systems in the same generation that I was able to paste in the missing device to get very consistent S3 performance. Using `acpiexec` was very helpful to simulate invoking sleep/suspend and being able to follow the execution path of where it would get stuck. Also want to add that random wakeups can be triggered by interrupts hitting devices in `/proc/acpi/wakeup`. These wakeup sources can be selectively disabled once the problematic ones are identified. I disable XHC (USB ports), because it seems my routine closes the lid to suspend and _then_ remove peripherals.. which can cause a wakeup! [1] https://gist.github.com/mailhost/d5b27b247fa26d8bdc8a5d2022347306 https://gist.github.com/mailhost/d5b27b247fa26d8bdc8a5d20223...

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
> The hackintosh community was helpful in providing ACPI dumps from similar enough Dell systems in the same generation that I was able to paste in the missing device to get very consistent S3 performance. +1. I love the Hackintosh community. Hackintosh forums are a gold mine of solutions to all types of ACPI DSDT problems. Many great tutorials, really helpful to Linux users. If the Hackintosh community doesn't exist, it wouldn't be possible. Not only DSDT, their EFI resources are also great, probably the biggest PC userbase of EFI bootloaders - earlier in this year I used a Hackintosh EFI device driver from Clover (free and open source) to help me booting from NVMe without BIOS support. In my previous life I also solved a non-standard graphics problem by backporting Hackintosh solution to Linux. Looking back, trying Hackintosh turned out to be a great decision, despite I only used it for a few months before quitting (I decided that voluntarily lock myself in a walled garden, then spent a lot of time installing a free software working environment back is unwise), otherwise I could not know its community and innovations. > Using `acpiexec` was very helpful to simulate invoking sleep/suspend and being able to follow the execution path of where it would get stuck. Also want to add that random wakeups can be triggered by interrupts hitting devices in `/proc/acpi/wakeup`. These wakeup sources can be selectively disabled once the problematic ones are identified. I disable XHC (USB ports) Thanks for the tip. I hope I'll never have to use it, but it could definitely help if I had to use yet another broken laptop for some reasons.

chadlavi 6y ago

> I've never experimented with auto-suspend on lid close and auto-resume on open; maybe that's what's more troublesome. That's what 99% of all laptop users would like a laptop be able to do, no? At the very least auto-suspend on close.

ACow_Adonis 6y ago
maybe that's the issue: as a hacker/ programmer/ data scientist, I spend my life trying to get the computer to not sleep/ suspend when I walk away because it's generally doing something. My use case is in direct contrast to the 99%, and with Linux being focused on a technical audience, it gets short shrift in terms of priorities/ resources. (honestly, most of my computers are generally set to no automatic sleeping/ suspension)
- chadlavi 6y ago
  > auto-suspend on lid close on lid close being the operative term here.
- BHSPitMonkey 6y ago
  I can't remember how many times in the last few years I've shut/stowed my ThinkPad, commuted home, and opened my backpack to find it burning hot and drained of battery because it either failed to sleep on close or reawakened itself while put away. Even now, turning off or disconnecting my Bluetooth headphones causes my modern/up-to-date Linux machines to reawake if they were connected before sleep, which inevitably causes my monitors to come back online and fill my room with light and fan noise while I'm trying to put _myself_ to sleep...
  - freedomben 6y ago
    Me too. I happens just often enough that I get complacent and forget to check D-: I have a habit now of just running: systemctl suspend -i Before closing the lid. Wake ups always work. That will suspend even if some applications is blocking suspends.
  - core-questions 6y ago
    > opened my backpack to find it burning hot Right? It's like, trying to suffocate itself. I just turn the damned thing off before going home now.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  This comment is baffling... If I get it right, it's saying that Linux is intentionally bad at shutdown / hibernation because that's how its users want it. And users want it because they are better users than other users: they are "professionals", whose computers never sleep. So, if you are using an OS that actually works as expected, that's just proof that you're an amateur. (and let's ignore the mention of the lid being closed. Because that would be devastating to this argument)
  - ACow_Adonis 6y ago
    I didn't say Linux is intentionally bad at hibernation/shutdown: I said maybe it's not a priority in terms of resources/focus. At no point did I say users want it to be bad at shutdown/hibernation. I said for my job/use-case, I spend most of my time trying to stop the computer from sleeping. I posted this because the comment I was responding to said that 99% of users wanted the computer to sleep on lid-shut, and I thought I'd contribute to point out that's the opposite of my use case (indeed, I pretty much want the computer to never sleep on lid-shut). And i run linux as the primary OS on pretty much all my computers. A lot of linux users are also probably coming from a background where computers didn't sleep/shutdown very often. I didn't use the word amateur. I didn't use the word professional. I didn't mention anything about using an OS that works as expected. I listed my background and use case. I didn't say anything about any users being better than others. I do think, based on all that, you may have some sensitivities that made you interpret things in a particular light.
MarkusWandel 6y ago
Auto-suspend on lid close is a feature that I hate. Even on my work Windows laptop, I can never be sure that it will suspend, and half the time you wish it wouldn't because then your VPN connection will time out, etc. Thus people walking around with their laptop open a couple of inches. Much better to completely disable auto-suspend and get used to just pushing the suspend button and waiting the couple of seconds for it to react and then closing the lid. That's the main reason I can't even be bothered to configure this (as in from the GUI) on my Linux machines.
- MarkusWandel 6y ago
  And what I mean by "flawless" is that the machine can be suspended and unsuspended hundreds of times between reboots, and that suspend/resume are quick. This definition of "flawless" also applies to the laptop that has the workaround on it. Kiddie laptops in this household aren't the most modern ones and reboots require patience.
- hsitz 6y ago
  I understand that. My Linux machine is a 2015 Asus UX305 laptop. Suspend/resume works under Ubuntu's desktop, but I use i3wm, which requires the user to enable features like that themselves. I never did get auto-suspend to work, but I was able to get suspend to work when I attached to a hotkey. So instead of closing lid (or having auto-suspend after, say, 30 minutes inactivity), I just press the hotkey to have the machine suspend. I grew to prefer this to lid-closing. (Auto-resume always worked fine under i3wm, just press any key and it started up).
  - javier2 6y ago
    The Asus UX3xx series has been working near flawless for me. I now have a ryzen based matebook that is quite moody wrt to suspend. I havent used hibernate in over 10 years.
- chadlavi 6y ago
  As a Mac user this is pure madness to me.