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The thing is - a lot if power saving is achieved by hybrid sleep (computer hibernating after a timeout).

Setting that up is pure hell on Linux, with poor documentation and security people actively fighting against making this easy.

On Windows/macOS it just works, on Linux you'll probably break secure boot with it.



> On Windows/macOS it just works, on Linux you'll probably break secure boot with it.

The way it works on my Windows laptop is it’ll stay in sleep overnight, then when I open the laptop in the morning it’ll wake up, then hibernate itself, then I have to wait for the computer to turn itself back on. Thankfully this feature can be turned off.


The way it works on mine is that I open it in the morning to find it powered off because it chose to force quit my running applications to apply updates.


That’s nice, at least it’s off. Mine usually hangs and ends up hot in the morning. I have to forcefully turn it off.

Luckily for me, I usually run Linux on this laptop which sleeps just fine.


That’s my experience too. It’s so infuriating!

The solution is to disable Wake Timers.


Maybe it just works on MacOS, but it's prone to all kinds of breakage on Windows.


That's because MSFT doesn't really do hibernate any more but does "modern sleep" where it functions like a phone with the screen off. It keeps active network connections, downloads patches and keeps checking for notifications and other such nonsense.

BIOS support for proper hibernation has been getting worse too because with MSFT demanding it, there is little reason to continue support.

I've had older laptops that do the sleep->hibernate setup without too much issue but now it is a crap-shoot on if it is even supported in the hardware.


>It keeps active network connections ...

You can disable that behavior. See: https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/146593-enable-disable-ne...


That's because the goal is not to have functional hibernation, but to start up faster. If the goal can be achieved by using less power instead of shutting down the whole machine and restoring it identically and that's easier it's a valid alternative.


Interesting. I have yet to come across a computer that I couldn't hibernate in Window.


No, Hybrid Sleep is when the Windows machine goes from Modern Standy to full shutdown and power off.

All laptops support that though it's not always enabled as a feature by default.


You used to be able to edit ACPI tables to reenable S3 sleep but these days they're stripping the functionality from firmware entirely.

For example, HP's enterprise lines have S3 stubs in their firmware. If you enable them, nothing happens, because someone deliberately removed the S3 blobs entirely.


I've never had an issue on Windows. This is why I gave up on using Linux laptops for any purpose.


I've had sleep issues on a Surface Pro.


You edit one line in a file to enable hybrid sleep. Uncomment one line in /etc/systemd/sleep.conf:

AllowHybridSleep=true

Your Linux installer will also set everything up needed for it.

It's also a GUI option in KDE's System Settings.


I wish it would be this simple.

In most cases your kernel will tell you it's "locked down" and refuse to hibernate. In my case - on a cutting edge kernel no less with Fedora - it refused to believe that the default disk encryption setup with Swap on encrypted LVM actually is encrypted and locked me out.

Linux security bros followed Apple and others here and refused to add any ability for us to configure or tell kernel that it's wrong about that and to fscking allow resume.

This stuff just works out of the box on both macOS and even the mess that is Windows.


Yeah, kernel lockdown is a shitshow


macOS mostly doesn't hibernate. Apple Silicon is just good enough to not need it.

It will do it eventually, though if you don't have enough free disk space it'll fail.




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